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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DD004E34HT2 




Gopyri^htN^? ^tJ^LiLl 



COHYKIGHT DEPOSIT. 




PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

From :i photograph by Brown Brothers, N. V 

Copyriglu, 1908 



A WEEK IN 
THE WHITE HOUSE 

WITH 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



A STUDY OF THE PRESIDENT 
AT THE NATION'S BUSINESS 



BY 
WILLIAM BAYARD HALE 



ILLUSTRATED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
Zbc ftntckerbocftcr iprcgs 

1908 






\ ^<y. v.: -((es Reoe.ived ■■ 



MaV 28 1908 



CO'^V .A. 



Copyright, igo8 

BY 

THE NEW YORK TIMES CO. 

Copyright, 1908 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube "ftnicfterbocfter ipre80, flew JBorft 



FOREWORD 

Nothing more interesting could he 
conceived, either for contemporaneous 
reading or for the purposes of history, 
than an accurate and realistic picture of 
the remarkable man who now occupies 
the Presidential chair as he appears at 
close hand actually engaged in the great 
duties of his office. 

The following article presents such a 
picture — the first ever given of any Presi- 
dent at his work, and by all odds the most 
intimate study of Mr. Roosevelt ever 
made public. The author spent some 
days watching the progress of Executive 
business at the White House and has 
here given a narrative of his observations 
— so far as consistent with propriety. 



iv fforewort) 



It is to be clearly understood 
that the president is in no sense 
and to no degree whatsoever re- 
sponsible for any statement, senti- 
ment, or opinion that follows. 
Nor does the author, when quoting the 
President, pretend to give his exact 
language; he records merely the impres- 
sion made. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introductory ..... i 

The President in the White House. 9 

Stage, Scenery, and Action of the Great 
Play— No Scene Like This in All the 
World — A Nation's Life in Panorama 
Passing before a President — What 
Manner of Man He Really Is. 

A View of the President at Work . 26 

How Cabinet Secretaries, Senators, Repre- 
sentatives, Officials in General, and 
Private Citizens See Mr. Roosevelt 
and Lay Their Troubles before Him — 
National Affairs can Be both Big and 
Little. 

The Spirit of the White House . 51 

Democracy and an Imperious Will — An 
Ever-Ready Courtesy and Ever-Bub- 
bling Good-Humour from a Man with 
a Neck of Steel — Power, without Its 
Circumstance, and Roars of Laughter. 



vi ContentB 



A Typical Day with the President 59 

Taft Gets the First Conference, while Bev- 
eridge Waits — A Congressman Rep- 
rimanded — The Ends of the World, 
the Extremes of Social Station, Con- 
trasting Ages, and Causes Innumerable 
and Diverse Dealt with by an Agile 
Mind. 

A Cabinet Day at the White House 90 

What One Man can Do in an Hour — 
Listening to Appeals for Pardon and 
for Appointments, Army and Navy 
Affairs, Delegations, and Resigna- 
tions, Righting Private Wrongs, and 
Deciding Public Questions in a Frac- 
tion of a Morning. 

Giving Audiences to Two Hundred . loi 

A Throng of Congressmen and Officials, 
with a Bewildering Variety of Concerns 
— Mr. Roosevelt Wants to Hunt Lions 
in Africa, but Meanwhile Urges Taft 
upon All Influential Callers, and Re- 
fuses to Talk with Third-Term Bourne. 

An Estimate of Mr. Roosevelt . 112 

' The Marvel of His Physical Energy, 
Nimbleness of Attention, Power of 



Contents vii 



Concentration, and Volume of Infor- 
mation — His Clairvoyant Under- 
standing of the Average Man — His 
Lack of Philosophical or Poetic 
Sympathy. 

The President on Mr. Roosevelt . 142 

What the Executive might Say of Himself 
— "I Am No Genius" — Washington, 
Lincoln, the Average Man, and Lead- 
ership — How Seeming Impetuosity 
may Really Be Reasoned, and Seem- 
ing Rashness Really Patience — The 
Fun of Being President. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAOE 

President Roosevelt . Frontispiece 
From a photograph by Brown Brothers, N. Y. 
Copyright, igo8 

The City of Washington, with the 
White House in the Foreground . lo 
From a photograph by Brown Brothers, N.Y. 

The White House, Showing the 
North Facade .... 20 
From a photograph by Brown Brothers, N. Y. 

William Loeb, Jr., the President's 
Secretary ..... 30 
From a photograph by Harris & Ewing 

The President's Office in the 
White House .... 40 
From a photograph by Detroit Photographic 
Company. Copyright, igo8 

The President at his Desk . . 52 

From a photograph by H. C. White Co., N. Y. 
Copyright, igo8 



fllustrations 



The Cabinet Room in the White 
House ..... 90 

From a photograph by Detroit Photographic 
Company. Copyright, jgo8 

Major Loeffler, the Doorkeeper . 118 
From a photograph by Harris & Ewing 

Callers at the White House . .126 

From a photograph by Brown Brothers, N. Y. 



A WEEK IN THE V/HITE 
HOUSE 



A Week in the White House 
with Theodore Roosevelt 



INTRODUCTORY 

It was curious enough that, on 
the train to Washington, a well- 
thumbed copy of the Journal Intime 
— which one may read with safety in 
the springtime — ^should have opened 
of itself so often to passages like these: 

The East prefers immobility as the form 
of the Infinite; the West, movement. It is 
because the West is infected by the passion of 
details. . . . Like a child upon whom a 
hundred thousand francs have been bestowed, 
she thinks she is multiplying her fortune by 
counting it out in pieces of twenty sous, or 
five centimes. Her passion for progress is in 



1rntro^uctorp 



great part the product of an infatuation, 
which consists in forgetting the goal to be 
aimed at, and absorbing herself in the pride 
and the delight of each tiny step, one 
after the other. Child that she is, she is 
even capable of confounding change with im- 
provement. . . . 

The divine state par excellence is that of 
silence and repose, because all speech and all 
action is in itself limited and fugitive. Na- 
poleon with his arms crossed over his breast 
is more expressive than the furious Hercules 
beating the air with his athlete's fists. People 
of passionate temperament never understand 
this. They are sensitive only to the energy 
of succession ; they know nothing of the energy 
of condensation. . . . 

Having early a glimpse of the absolute, I 
have never had the indiscreet effrontery of 
individualism. What right have I to make a 
merit of a defect? I have never been able to 
see any necessity for imposing myself upon 
others, nor for succeeding. I have seen no- 
thing clearly except my own deficiencies and 
the superiority of others. That is not the way 
to make a career. 

If the gentle philosopher of Geneva 



1[ntro&uctori? 



could have lived to see this day and 
had looked about for the chief living 
incarnation and exemplification of the 
view of life which he reprobated, he 
would have recognised it in the person 
of the twenty-fifth President of the 
Republic whose proclivities he did live 
to deplore. A fresh reading of the 
journal of this man of contemplation 
was, therefore, scarcely the appropri- 
ate preparation for a study of the 
man of action. Nevertheless, however 
much I may have been impressed with 
Amiel's praise of the energy of con- 
centration, after an observation of the 
President during a number of days 
I am prepared to admit that there is a 
place in the world also for representa- 
tives of the energy of succession. 

It is, at all events, certain that the 
Oriental type of mind is not adapted to 



Ifntro^uctoti? 



the leadership of the Western world. 
The holy man who spends a lifetime 
contemplating his navel, may achieve 
rich stores of wisdom and may free his 
soul from earthly dross — but he would 
not make a good President of the 
United States. If we of the West 
will persist in our infatuation for move- 
ment, then the force of circumstances 
will push to our head the man who 
most completely represents activity. 

This is the principle which has made 
Theodore Roosevelt President; which 
would inevitably have made him Presi- 
dent in any conceivable combination of 
events; this is the principle which has 
made him far more than President. 
Think what you may of Mr. Roosevelt's 
policies — and let it be said now that this 
article has nothing to do with these — 
believe him all wrong if you will, hate 



fntro^uctorl? s 

him personally, if you will, it is impos- 
sible to deny that he is the idol of more 
Americans than any other man has 
ever been, and that he is believed 
abroad to be the most typical man of 
his nation. He is the type of active 
energy. 

Any portrait of Mr. Roosevelt must 
make that fact prominent. But it is 
that fact which makes a por- no Portrait 
trait such as this would be „ ^^J^ *^® 

Real Presi- 

— a "pen portrait" in the old dent, 

phrase, namely — the only one that 
can hope to portray him. The 
President has been studied on the 
model throne and at his desk by Char- 
tran, Sargent, Rouland, and others. He 
will never live in verity on any canvas. 
Of all men the President lends himself 
least to portraiture by the brush. 
Painting is a still art. It cannot repre- 



1rntro^uctor^ 



sent action. The President in repose 
is a dynamo at rest — and looks the part. 
But it is hardly worth while to paint a 
dynamo. M. Chartran's hand symbo- 
lises strength; Roiiland's face and pose 
express strength. But the only picture 
that can give Mr. Roosevelt will be 
drawn by the art of words. They 
photograph the lightning now, but it is 
a poor sense of its brilliant energy one 
gets from the fixed outline of the pict- 
ure. I believe the cinematograph 
hasn't yet been prefected to the 
point where it can catch the flame of 
heaven, and I am sure it couldn't 
keep up with Mr. Roosevelt's activity. 
It is the hope of this article, however, 
to give a sort of verbal cinemato- 
graphic study of the President. It 
wants to picture him forth in the suc- 
cession of attitudes and moods through 



irntto^uctor^ 



which he passes as he carries on the 
work of the Nation, and to record the 
impressions which he makes upon one 
who observes him in the unconscious 
self-revelation of his busiest hours. It 
is to be understood that it is a view of 
the President at work, a picture of the 
man in his Executive Ofhce. 



THE PRESIDENT IN THE WHITE 
HOUSE 

Stage, Scenery, and Action of the Great Play— No 
Scene Like This in All the World— A Nation's 
Life in Panorama Passing before a President— 
What Manner of Man He Really Is. 

Imagine, then, a room thirty feet 
square, with three windows looking 
south over the White House grounds to 
the Potomac and the Virginia hills, the 
top half of the Monument visible over 
the back-screen of a tennis court. A 
big desk with a few papers (always in 
order), a few books, an art nouveau 
lamp, and two or three vases of flow- 
ers, facing a fireplace above which 
hangs an oil portrait of Lincoln— a poor 
one; I hope it bears the ''pinxit" of no 



lo Ube president 

friend of mine. It is the only artistic 
ornament of the room ; though there is 
a tiny clock on the mantel, and a little 
above it a photograph of a big bear and 
a framed autograph of the sonnet by 
J. J. Ingalls: 

OPPORTUNITY 

Master of human destinies am I. 

Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait, 

Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate 

Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 

Hovel, the mart, and palace, soon or late 

I knock unbidden once at every gate ! 

If sleeping wake — if feasting, rise before 

I turn away. It is the hour of fate, 

And they who follow me reach every state 

Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 

Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate. 

Condemned to failure, penury, and woe. 

Seek me in vain and uselessly implore, 

I answer not, and I return no more. 

The room contains no patriotic sym- 
bol nor emblem of office, unless the 



irn tbe Mbite fDouse n 

big bunch of American Beauties be 
considered one, and the huge globe in a 
comer in some sort the other. Be- 
sides, a leather-covered divan and a 
chair or two, mahogany, like the desk. 
The woodwork ivory, the walls covered 
with dark olive burlap, two windows 
behind the desk, five pairs of olive 
curtains. So severe is the room that 
very few business men indeed have not 
its superior in decoration, if not in 
simple comfort. 

There is no telephone in the Presi- 
dent's Office. 

Adjoining this room and connecting 
with it by sliding doors, so that the 
two apartments are practically one, is 
a counterpart, though ten feet longer— 
the Cabinet room. This is pretty well 
filled up by the great table around 
which the President's advisers assemble 



12 XTbe presiDent 

on Tuesdays and Fridays at eleven. 
Each of the arm-chairs is assigned and 
bears upon its back a silver plate indi- 
cating its assignment. I don't know 
that anybody ever looks up, but if he 
does he sees in the middle of the ceiling 
of either room a cluster of electric lights 
set at the heart of a system of gilded 
rays where a picture of an All-Seeing 
Eye might be expected. The Presi- 
dent's fauteuil has a back a trifle taller 
than have the seats of the Executive 
family. I grieve to state that the 
Cabinet room harbours a cuspidor. A 
big divan; half a dozen chairs against 
the wall, which is adorned only with 
maps; a pair of dwarf Japanese pines 
on the mantel, and — it is no time to 
suppress the truth — frequently the silk 
hat of a visitor; a revolving book-case 
containing the Federal Statutes at 



Hit tbe mbtte Ibouse 13 

Large and such like tomes; a table and 
a silver water-pitcher in a comer — and 
you have a picture of the olive-and- 
ivory office whence go forth edicts 
which have determined so much con- 
temporaneous history and in so large 
a measure are shaping the burdened 
future. For the matter of that I re- 
member that 10, Downing Street is 
plain, and I have seen a King dispense 
judgment under a tree and a Pope give 
blessing in a garden. 

But no man has ever seen, anywhere 
on earth, a scene of such democratic 
setting and manner of en- ^^ g^^ ^ 
actment, significant of such the scenery, 

- 1 . -, ^1 ^ and the Man. 

far-reaching results, as that 
which is to be seen in these olive- 
and-ivory rooms any day when the flag 
is flying over the White House roof. 
The President repairs to his office 



14 Ube president 

each morning at 9:30, except on Sun- 
day, and to it come to seek him the 
high and the low — if there be any low 
in a Republic like this of ours. Before 
you admit them in imagination get the 
permanent features of the scene in 
mind: 

Imagine at the desk sometimes, on 
the divan sometimes, sometimes in a 
chair in the farthest comer of the 
Cabinet room, more often on his feet 
— it may be anywhere within the four 
walls — the muscular, massive figure of 
Mr. Roosevelt. You know his features 
— the close-clipped brachycephalous 
head, close-clipped mustache, pince- 
nez, square and terribly rigid jaw. 
Hair and moustache indeterminate in 
colour; eyes a clear blue; cheeks and 
neck ruddy. He is in a frock-coat, a 
low collar with a four-in-hand, a light 



fn tbe Mbite Douse is 

waistcoat, and grey striped trousers — 
not that you would ever notice all that 
unless you pulled yourself away from 
his face and looked with deliberate 
purpose. Remember that he is almost 
constantly in action, speaking earnestly 
and with great animation; that he 
gestures freely, and that his whole face 
is always in play. For he talks with 
his whole being — mouth, eyes, fore- 
head, cheeks, and neck all taking their 
mobile parts. The President is in the 
pink of condition to-day ; his face clear, 
his weight I shoiild say wellnigh a 
stone less than was his habit back of a 
year ago. Look at him as he stands 
and you will see that he is rigid as a 
soldier on parade. His chin is in, his 
chest out. The line from the back of 
his head falls straight as a plumb-line to 
his heels. Never for a moment, while 



i6 XLbc iPreslbent 

he is on his feet, does that Hne so much 
as waver, that neck unbend. It is a 
pillar of steel. Remember that steel 
pillar. Remember it when he laughs, 
as he will do a hundred times a day — 
heartily, freely, like an irresponsible 
school-boy on a lark, his face flushing 
ruddier, his eyes nearly closed, his 
utterance choked with mirth, and 
speech abandoned or become a weird 
falsetto. For the President is a joker, 
and (what many jokers are not) a 
humourist. He is always looking for 
fun — and always finding it. He likes it 
rather more than he does a fight — but 
that *s fun too. You have to remember, 
then, two things to see the picture: 
a room filled with constant good- 
humour, breaking literally every five 
minutes into a roar of laughter — and 
a neck of steel. 



fn tbe Mbtte tbouse 17 

Not that the President always stands 
at attention. He doubles up when 
he laughs, sometimes. Sometimes — 
though only when a visitor whom he 
knows well is alone with him — he puts 
his foot on a chair. When he sits, 
however, he is very much at ease — half 
the time with one leg curled up on the 
divan or maybe on the Cabinet table 
top. And, curiously, when the Presi- 
dent sits on one foot his visitor is likely 
to do the same, even if, Hke Mr. Justice 
Harlan or Mr. J. J. Hill, he has to take 
hold of the foot and pull it up. 

All this may be very idle, yet it is all 
part of the scene. 

Imagine ushered into this olive-and- 
ivory apartment inhabited by its great 
personality, a procession of Cabinet 
Ministers, Supreme Court Justices, 
Senators, Governors, Representatives, 



1 8 Ube president 

Mayors, bureau chiefs and depart- 
mental officers, political leaders, officers 
of the Army and Navy, seek- 

Tne 

Passing Pro- ers for officc (hungry and 
importunate ) , postmasters, 
collectors. Federal marshals and attor- 
neys, counsellors, commissioners, dele- 
gations representing all conceivable in- 
terests, almost all with favours to beg 
for, men with reports to make, men 
with grievances to complain of — these 
interspersed with distinguished citizens, 
often accompanied by their wives, liter- 
ati from every clime, travellers on globe- 
girdling journeys who want to shake 
hands, hunters, cattlemen, railroad 
presidents, reformers (fire in each eye 
and papers in each hand), miners, 
mechanics, Indians, Japanese, editors, 
clergymen — all who can get a Congress- 
man to introduce them — imagine such 



irn tbe Mbite Ibouse 19 

a procession passing from 10 till 1:30 
each day and day after day, and this 
man dealing with it — as I shall tell. 

They are ushered into the Cabinet 
room, after a longer or a shorter wait 
in the ante-rooms, by the doorkeeper, 
Major LoefBer, who, in any other land, 
would be a personage of recognised 
influence, though, indeed, his import- 
ance is recognised here. For, however 
democratic, the President's audience- 
room is a court, and admission to the 
Presidential presence at the right mo- 
ment and under favourable circum- 
stances may be the making of a career 
the most unpromising, or the ruining 
of one the most lofty. The doorkeep- 
er's watchful eye keeps three or four 
important personages, or maybe a 
score of less important ones, in the Cab- 
inet room. Senators and Representa- 



20 Ube iprest^ent 

tives have the entree between lo and 12 
o'clock. All others are obliged to ar- 
range a special appointment through 
Mr. Loeb, Secretary to the President. 
The doorkeeper admits the latter from 
his printed list. The privileged enter 
without awaiting the doorkeeper's in- 
vitation, swelling the audience until 
sometimes there are twenty assembled 
in the Cabinet room — men the names 
of half of whom are famous, while 
those of the other half are unknown 
save in their village or labour union. It 
is not always possible to distinguish 
the pillar of state from the private citi- 
zen. One not familiar with the figures 
who are enacting the drama of the 
Nation's Administration would find it 
somewhat difficult to believe that 
.great things are happening in these 
rooms. 




3 -C 4= 

^ M O" 

^ C OS 

¥| 2 



ITn tbe mbtte Ibouse 21 

All within the Executive Office await 
the President's pleasure. The rule 
may be said to be : You , , 

"^ In the 

come to the White House for Audience- 
an interview with the Presi- °°™' 

dent, but once you are within it, the 
President goes to you to give you the 
interview. He does not keep his seat 
and summon you. He is quite alone 
and unattended. He may speak your 
name or beckon. He is more likely to 
step up to you, greet you, get at your 
business, dispose of it, say good-bye, 
and pass to another. In this way he 
will make the circuit of the Cabinet 
room half a dozen times of a morning. 
Here it is a case of ''yes" or a *'no." 
Here it is to hear a story and make a 
reference to the proper department and 
official. In many instances it is to con- 
sider and decide in one minute, on the 



2 2 Ube prestbent 

feet, finally, a matter of importance, 
often of vast consequence. Now and 
then the President passes a visitor and 
returns when he has disposed of half 
a dozen others to have two whole min- 
utes standing with him in the nearly 
emptied room. Now and then a Sena- 
tor or a Cabinet secretary will be 
motioned into the inner room while the 
President continues his round, or 
taken into it while the others wait 
watching the two at the desk or on the 
divan. Here is a delegation to be 
listened to and answered. Here a dis- 
tinguished citizen to be greeted, merely. 
Here a patriotic gentleman anxious 
to serve his country in a remunerative 
office, to be sent away with any hope 
there may be for him. 

It is a procession, the passing of 
which affords a panorama of the 



Ifn tbe Mbite Ibouse 



National life; the look and bearing of 
which makes one proud of his fellow- 
countrymen; the reception Panorama 
of which makes him marvel „ °f *^^ 

National 

at his country's President. Life. 

I affirm that if any who in these days 
of cynicism despairs of popular gov- 
ernment could spare an hour in the 
President's room he would leave fresh- 
ened and sweetened with a sense of the 
essential worth of American civilisa- 
tion. Every President has given free 
audience to representatives of the 
people. But not before has the Nation 
been what it is to-day, with its pos- 
sessions in the antipodes and its influ- 
ence in every other capital on the 
globe. And not before has there met 
the visitors a man like this — a man 
with a mind so apt and spirit so sincere, 
without self -consciousness and without 



24 XTbe iprestbent 

reserve, a man of such rarely failing 
gleefulness and yet such indomitable 
resolution. 

Mr. Roosevelt is always President 
and always a very strong-willed and 
assertive President. He will be master 
or he will die. And yet he will not be 
master otherwise than by virtue of his 
ability to prove that he ought to be. 
He maintains his right to have his 
way — on the ground that his way is 
right. He is ready to go into the arena 
at any moment and fight out all over 
again the question which is the best 
man, which is the best cause. He will 
make no appeal to his Constitutional 
dignity ; he will not dominate by sym- 
bolism. He will not say: '' I am Presi- 
dent; people, bow down." He will 
say : * ' I am right on this thing, and you 
have got to admit it." And it is here 



•ffn tbe Mblte Ibouse 25 

in these rooms of olive and ivory that 
he is forever doing both these things: 
ruHng with an indomitabiHty of will 
with which no other President and 
with which scarcely a Ptolemy or a 
Caesar ever ruled, and all the time 
freely, with a democracy of spirit 
impossible to conceive, with good 
nature, with gallant courtesy, with ro- 
bust joy, maintaining and vindicating 
against all comers his right to rule. 



A VIEW OF THE PRESIDENT AT 
WORK 

How Cabinet Secretaries, Senators, Representa- 
tives, Officials in General, and Private Citizens 
See Mr. Roosevelt and Lay Their Troubles 
before Him — National Affairs can Be both Big 
and Little. 

This is the manner of it: 

A Cabinet secretary is seated in 
the inner office. A dozen men are 
standing in the Cabinet room. The 
President is passing around the table — 
he never goes, so to speak, "with the 
bottle" and the hands of the clock, but 
always in the reverse direction. His 
speech is explosive, not merely em- 
phatic, and his hand-grip is strong. 

Let me say here, what must be kept 

in mind constantly, that I report the 
26 



Ubc lPreBi6ent at Mork 27 

President's words only as I remember 
them. No record was kept; no notes 
were taken. Very likely I may have 
introduced locutions which were not the 
President's — my own or those of vis- 
itors, the impression of which could 
easily have become confused with that 
made by the President's words. It 
would be entirely unwarrantable to 
hold Mr. Roosevelt responsible for any 
utterance reported in this manner — nor 
will any one presume to do so. I be- 
lieve, however, that the • impression I 
give of the President's words and man- 
ner is essentially accurate. 

''Senator, I — am glad to see 
you. Senator, this is a — very 
great pleasure. Only to introduce 

Mr. B ? Well, Sir, it is a very 

great pleasure to meet you. Sir, a — 
very great pleasure. You please 



^8 H IDtew ot 



me by giving me this opportunity. 
Your daughters? I am, indeed, 
pleased to have this visit from you. 
It is a GREAT PLEASURE. Senator, 
I THANK you for affording me this 
opportunity. I lived in Dakota my- 
self before there was a South Dakota 
and I THOUGHT I knew something 
of the possibilities of the country. 
But who would have dreamed of 
this? We thought Dakota had 
something to boast of in my day, 
but we hardly hoped for such 
altogether satisfactory and charm- 
ing products as this! This is a 
GREAT pleasure, young ladies." 
They are indeed pretty girls, but a 
sad-faced veteran, tall, and still erect 
with the remnants of military bearing, 
though he visibly trembles as he sup- 
ports himself on his stick, is waiting. 



Ube presibent at UdorK 29 



You would instinctively address him as, 
''Colonel." To him the President 
passes : 

"I am VERY glad indeed to see 
you, Sir. Have you prepared the 
papers of which I spoke? It would 
be advisable to lose no time in do- 
ing so. The Department is exacting 
about those matters — necessarily 
so, you understand. You may de- 
pend " 

But the old man, between excitement 
and poor ears, can't follow the Presi- 
dent's rapid utterance and throws up 
a hand in despairing gesture. The 
President begins again, stepping closer 
and speaking slowly and distinctly. 
Still: "I am very sorry, Mr. Presi- 
dent, that I don't seem able quite to 
follow you. I feared it might be this 
way, and I have the whole thing right 



30 H Diew of 



here. I have put it all on this paper in 
the fewest possible words. I have 
counted the words and can't take one 
away. It will save you trouble." 

That was the only paper the Presi- 
dent accepted that day. "Yes," he 
said, ''this is indeed the very best way. 
I thank you for your kind considera- 
tion of men and the Nation's time. I 
THANK you, Sir." And the veteran 
went away, his fingers pretty well used 
up by a friendly handshake, but his 
heart warm toward a considerate 
President. 

Next stand a Senator and a Governor 

with a candidate to succeed Mr. Ridgely 

as Controller of the Cur- 

Vacancies 

and rency. They get little satis- 

Candidates. - 

faction. 
The Public Printership i^ on the 
President's mind. He asks a visitor: 




WILLIAM LOEB, JR. 

The President's Secretary 

From a photograph by Harris & Ewing 



TTbe presi^ent at Morft 31 

*' What do you know about ? Taft 

thinks well of him.'* Every day some 
one broaches the matter of the Public 
Printer to the President. He asks: 

*'What do you think of ? Loeb 

says that is a fine fellow. I am 

trying to find out what the law means 
by ' a practical printer.' I want some- 
body there who will stop waste and 
save money." 

An Army officer wants leave of 
absence. *'Send me a memorandum, 
so that I can take it up on Friday with 
the Cabinet." 

A new Congressman is next in the 
circle. He pulls out a long letter from 
the Postmistress of Cement — I think it 
is in Arizona. The President is visibly 
torn between impatience and a desire 
not to hurt the visitor's self-respect. 
*'My DEAR Sir, you must see 



32 H IDiew ot 



that my hands are pretty full here. 
I really know nothing about this 
case. You say she has been treated 
unfairly, she thinks? That is too 
bad. We can't have injustice done 
anybody, least of all a woman. 
Take this matter up with Mr. Meyer. 
It is his affair first, you know. 
He may see something of the merits 
of the case; really, I do not. I have 
never heard of the good woman, and 
to be PERFECTLY Candid with you, 
I have never heard of — Cement! 
I could n't act any way until after I 
had had a report from the Post- 
master General. That is the way 
for you to get at it. It is a very 
great pleasure to have seen you and 
I hope you will come often. Good- 
day, Sir." 
The President passes on. 



XTbe preBt^ent at Morft 33 

Remember that Mr. Roosevelt never 
speaks a word in the ordinary con- 
versational tone. He utters ^^airs Big 
everything with immense and Little, 
emphasis, his face energised from 
the base of the neck to the roots 
of the hair, his arms usually gesticulat- 
ing, his words bursting forth like pro- 
jectiles, his whole being radiating force. 
He does not speak fast, always paus- 
ing before an emphatic word, and 
letting it out with the spring of 
accumulated energy behind it. The 
President does n't allow his witticisms 
to pass without enjoying them. He al- 
ways stops — indeed, he has to stop till 
the convulsion of merriment is over 
and he can regain his voice. 

*'My dear Sir, I am glad to see 
you. How DARE you introduce 
yourself to me! I have not for- 



34 H IDtew ot 



gotten your affair, and you will 
find that instructions have been 
given to have your very reasonable 
request complied with. I wish you 
good luck, Sir, the very best of good 
luck. It has been a — very — great 
pleasure to serve you." 

*'My DEAR Governor, how good of 
you to come to see me again! I 
must have more time for you. Wait 
one moment. Mr. Bartholdt, I am 

INDEED — GLAD tO SCC yOU." 

Representative Bartholdt, who is 
better known as a peace advocate than 
as a Congressman, has come on a small 
matter of $90,000,000 for new public 
buildings. He goes away with the im- 
pression that $15,000,000 is about all 
Congress ought to recommend on the 
eve of a Presidential campaign. 

This is a quiet, almost whispered con- 



Ube prestbent at Morft ss 



ference. With the next in the circle 
the President enters into a subject 
which arouses him. He bursts out 
against his detractors. His arms begin 
to pump. His finger rises in the air. 
He beats one palm with the other fist. 
''They have no conception of what 
I 'm driving at, absolutely none. 
It PASSES BELIEF — the Capacity of 
the human mind to resist intelli- 
gence. Some people won't learn, 
won't think, won't know. The 
amount of— stupid perversity that 
lingers in the heads of some men 
is a miracle.'' 

The President passes on to Senator 
Taylor and Representative Hull, and 
hears what they have to say for their 
candidate, a Mr. Asbury Wright, for 
the Tennessee vacancy on the Federal 
bench. 



36 H IDiew or 



Then he goes back to the Governor 
of Nebraska and Senator Burkett and 
A Nebraska ^he delegation accompany- 
Delegation, {^g them, cattlemen from 
Nebraska asking the passage of laws 
that will enable them to lease and 
fence Government lands for pasturage 
purposes. It is one of those cases in 
which 'clamorous class prejudice would 
detect a conflict between the interest 
of capital and the interest of the 
small man. The President sees that 
and puts the point at once. Sena- 
tor Burkett has prepared a bill which 
the delegation declares meets the wishes 
of the big ranch owners and the little 
cattlemen; it gives the big herders the 
chance to range their cattle on Govern- 
ment lands under lease, but allows ac- 
tual settlers to take up lands whether 
or not under lease. 



Ube prestbent at Morft 37 



The President gives the delegation to 
understand that he will do everything 
in his power to help them. 

" But the fate of the bill," he adds 
with a laugh, ''lies with the 'co- 
ordinate branch. ' I am not that, too, 
all reports to the contrary notwith- 
standing. But this is precisely 
what I have been working for and 
what I stand for, in every branch 
of the Government — to give the big 
men and the little men both the 
best possible chance. Safeguard 
them equally, too. That is what I 
have been trying to do in the case of 
combinations — to encourage good 
and beneficent combinations and to 
prevent bad ones. But just as I 
am handicapped in your matter of 
the Government lands, which ought 
not to be permitted to lie idle, 



38 H Dtew ot 



which ought to be put to lease un- 
der the best conditions possible until 
the settler who wants them per- 
manently comes along, just so I 
have been hindered and embarrassed 
by the ill-devised and foolish and 
ineffectual anti-trust law which works 
wrong any way you look at it." 
Again let me say that this is an im- 
pression from memory, not a record of 
the President's words. 

Then the President goes into the par- 
ticulars of cattle-raising with the dele- 
gation. He knows as much about the 
subject as any of them. The language 
of the range is freely on his lips; the 
special terms and the special knowledge 
of the ranchman is his in full. He 
chuckles as he tells the story of a 
point he had won for the cattlemen 
over the legislative branch. No matter 



Ube ipresi&ent at Morft 39 



what — it was a simple affair of slip- 
ping a certain provision into an appro- 
priation bill. 

**I'm a Western man myself," 
laughs the President, "and we 
Western men are quick with our 
guns. I 'd like to have seen Brother 

's face when he learned the 

awfiil truth. Gentlemen, I can't 
TELL you how GREAT a pleasure 
this has been. I know your coun- 
try and I LIKE it. I Hke the life 
of it. By George, I do! Let 's not 
forget each other, boys. Good luck 
to all of you. A great pleasure, 
a VERY — GREAT pleasure indeed. 
Governor, take a seat in there with 
the Secretary." 

It is a question not to be decided 
whether the President or the Nebras- 
kans were the happier during their 



40 H IDiew ot 



interview. The President had lectured 
them on their own subject, told them 
stories of their own life, and laughed 
with them till all were convulsed and 
redder in the face than the prairie sun 
ever made them. They were good 
stories, too, and merited the prosperity 
they would enjoy anyway if they 
were not worth telHng. He had sent 
them off with a shout of laughter, him- 
self too convulsed to do more than 
wave a final good-bye. 

The President notices a button in 

the lapel. ''Well, comrade, what was 

your regiment?" is a sim- 

mander-in- pie phrasc, but it facilitates 

the hesitating speech of an 

embarrassed visitor. 

A Spanish war hero has a concern he 
wants to lay before the President. A 
rosette gives the clue as to his Army 




3 oi 

SI 

o 









I 2 §• 



Ube ipresi^ent at Morft 41 

experience. '' What is your rank, com- 
rade? ONLY a Captain? Why do you 
say ONLY a Captain? You ought to be 
THANKFUL you ARE only a Captain. 
Don't envy any officer who has higher 
rank," says the Commander-in-Chief 
earnestly. *'I was overjoyed to be a 
Lieutenant-Colonel, because it gave me 
a chance to get to the front." 

The President does like the military 
life. He does not regard his experience 
during the Spanish War as an episode 
by the way. He is very proud of it. 
Still, when the other day a young 
woman lately back from an excursion to 
Havana innocently asked him if he 
had ever been in Cuba, the legendary 
author of ** Alone on San Juan Hill" 
laughed as uproariously as anybody 
could. I presume the President has 
about as much military experience as 



42 H IDiew ot 



Colonel Washington had when he was 
chosen to command the Continental 
Army. If that does not give him the 
right to call a Civil War veteran * ' Com- 
rade," perhaps the fact that he is con- 
stitutional Commander-in-Chief may 
suggest to the President this way of 
greeting a veteran with a pleasant 
compliment. 

Here is a delegation from the Phila- 
delphia Board of Trade, introduced by 
Representative McCreary. 
Work for Another jolly greeting, but 

Philadelphia ,. ., * . i 

the matter is not happy. 
The League Island Navy Yard is dis- 
charging men and shortening the 
time of others. The President would 
like to see the mechanics kept em- 
ployed by the Government, but it is a 
case of short appropriations. 

' ' I am not the ' co-ordinate 
branch,' " he says, "much as I some- 



Ube president at Mork 43 

times wish I were, much as I some- 
times wish I could go down the 
Avenue and tell some of those 
people how to vote. We hope to 
do better by Philadelphia both in 
the matter of work for the navy- 
yards and workmen in the army 
stores. But that is subject to the will 
of Providence and Uncle Joe. Let 
me see, did I mention Providence 
first? I heard some one advising the 
other day that the President lie down 
on Uncle Joe. That man didn't 
know Uncle Joe. Well, gentlemen, 
go see Taft. Tell him you came at 
my request and that I want him to 
do anything that can be done legit- 
imately." 

Don't imagine that there is ever any 
lack of emphasis. This is only the 
substance of it, but in fact it is all 



44 H IDiew of 



gone over substantially. Don't imagine 
either that the jokes are casual only. 
You don't smile with Mr. Roosevelt; 
you shout with laughter with him and 
then you shout again while he tries to 
cork up more laugh, and sputters, 

** Come, gentlemen, let us be serious. 
This is most unbecoming. And there 
are Senators present, wise and grave 
men. Only when I think of my sins 
against the 'co-ordinate branch'" — 
and everybody is off again, including 
the Senators. 

A member of the Philadelphia dele- 
gation had had good hunting in North- 
ern Pennsylvania last Winter. The 
President is eager to hear about it, but 
grows suspicious at the suggestion that 
he try it himself. 

**Come up to Pike County and 
have a shot? Ah! I know precisely 



XTbe president at morft 45 



how it would be. I should n't get a 
shot, and I should be told that I 
should have come last year or next 
month, or that game was plenty just 
over the border in the next county ! 
Why, I spent twelve days last winter 
getting one bear. Twelve days!" 

And now I must get over and see 

the next President," says a visitor. 

'* Yes, go see Taft," the Pres- ^he Next 

ident responds instantly President 

. . . , — "Taft.'» 

without a quiver of eye or 
mouth. 

All this has taken perhaps ten min- 
utes, and now the President joins the 
Secretary of Agriculture, who intro- 
duces the members of the Pure Food 
Advisory Board. 

Then there are two minutes with 
Governor Sheldon on the Currency 



46 H Diew of 



Relief bill and the Republican prospects 
in Nebraska. 

The Attorney General enters. I had 
thought the President couldn't listen. 
It is a mistake. He can listen to the 
drawl of Mr. Bonaparte; listen to the 
high- voiced protestations of Secretary 
Wilson; listen to the man from the 
other side of the world, who may have 
tucked away about him somewhere a 
piece of new knowledge or a new idea; 
listen gravely to the utterances of the 
spokesmen of a delegation, and re- 
ward him with a beaming smile which 
confesses that it was as well said as 
if the President had said it himself. 
The President can do another thing; he 
can bring his interlocutor back to the 
subject with a word. And he can make 
an inquiry that opens up the heart of 
the whole matter. I was much im- 



Ubc iPreslDent at Morft 47 



pressed by the keenness of the Presi- 
dent's questions. 

If there is jocularity, there is plenty 
of seriousness too. It wotild be kill- 
ing business without the re- jg ^j^j^ 
lief of fun. The President Paranoia? 
has grown in suavity of manner, 
and his good-humour has deepened. 
He is by nature severe^ — he is severe 
with himself— and he is masterful; but 
he has learned to find recreation in the 
indulgence of a sense of the ridiculous, 
and he has grown kindlier. His talent 
for order surprised me. He never looks 
at the clock, but he seems to have a 
subconscious sense of the passing of 
the minutes. He takes up a new man 
with a new interest like a machine 
grabbing a new piece of metal to shape 
it to the requirement in precisely so 
many seconds. He works off a crowd 



48 H IDiew of 



as if by the stop-watch. Not a second 
is lost. He sees with eyes fitted by 
nature with a wide-angle lens, com- 
manding the whole room at once, but 
intent on the eye of the man to whom 
he is talking. When at his desk he 
is signing a document, or putting his 
" O.K." on an order, or writing an hour 
or a name in a blank schedule of ap- 
pointments, during the second while his 
new vis-k-vis is settling himself or 
reaching into his pocket for a paper. A 
noiseless secretary comes in every few 
minutes and gathers up the proofs of 
this unobserved work. There is n't an 
usher nor a master of ceremony nor 
an attendant nor a guard within the two 
rooms, yet every man is seen in proper 
order, under the briskest but seemly 
conditions, and his affair dispatched 
swiftly, yet with ample opportunity for 



Ube president at Mork 49 

its complete airing (I can't too strongly 
declare that if any man fails to get 
a full hearing it is his own fault) — all 
with a good-humour, a frankness, an 
eager purpose to have everything clear, 
and a practical efficiency that would 
be wonderful in any hard-headed busi- 
ness man. This is the paranoiac of his 
irresponsible accusers; the man who, 
some have not scrupled to hint, is a 
dipsomaniac, a cigarette fiend, and a 
victim of pathological ego enlargement. 
One morning a little girl had come 
in with the last delegation of the day. 
Her mother had cunningly put an auto- 
graph albtim in her hands against the 
case of her attracting the President's 
attention. She did attract it, and so 
did the albtim. The big man took 
it, turned to its front page, and 
found the kiddie's name — "Rosalie," I 



so Ube iPresiDent at Morft 

think it was — carried it over to the 
Cabinet table, sat down in his big chair 
and wrote an affectionate sentiment on 
a leaf that will probably be preserved 
for grandchildren to read. Then he 
had time enough to go back to his own 
desk for a flower, poking about over 
three or four bouquets, and picking out 
an especially pretty white carnation to 
charm her with a moment before he 
sent her away with a gleeful shout of 
possession. Somehow one can't dread 
with overwhelming fear the dark de- 
signs of a man who sits with his legs 
curled under him and bothers to pick 
just the right flower for a little girl. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE WHITE 
HOUSE 

Democracy and an Imperious Will — An Ever- 
Ready Courtesy and Ever-Bubbling Good- 
Humour from a Man with a Neck of Steel — 
Power, without Its Circumstance, and Roars 
of Laughter. 

That is the way it goes — ^not that 
this is more than a hint of it, or 
carries the least suggestion of the 
big things that are going on but 
cannot be referred to here. It is the 
most wonderful scene in the world. It 
is the greatest exhibition that has ever 
been given of democracy and of power. 
This mingHng of Senators and Justices 
with cattlemen and railroad mechanics 
in the audience-room of the head of a 
nation is a thing to ponder on, and 
51 



52 XTbe Spirit of 

when you consider that he is the most 
autocratic spirit the Republic has seen 
in power and yet behold him do more 
homage to the rights of democracy 
and magnify them beyond any prede- 
cessor, the wonder becomes a phe- 
nomenon for history to resolve. 

President Roosevelt is a ruler. We 
don't use the word in this country, and 
don't Hke it. But we have the fact — 
and it is evident we do like it. No 
European sovereign rules as Roosevelt 
rules. But he does it by sheer force 
of character — and let us save our faces 
by adding, by the consent and desire of 
the people, who believe him to be 
right in what he demands. He does n't 
do it (this is my point here) by bring- 
ing into play any mysterious power 
inherent in his office. He doesn't 
do it by surrounding himself with 




THE PRESIDENT AT HIS DESK 

From a photograph by H. C. White Co., X. 

Copyright, 1908 



XCbe TObttc Ibouse 53 



the circumstance of supreme power. 
He is primus inter pares by virtue of a 
grim determination to be, assisted by a 
sincerity and perspicacity such as po- 
litical opposition has never before met 
and now does not know how to meet. 
The President is imperious because he 
thinks he is right. He will meet all 
comers, on the ground without handi- 
cap, and have it out fairly, and maybe 
hotly. There is just this much formal- 
ity about it: everybody says "Mr. 
President," and everybody rises when 
the President does. There is all proper 
decorum, but it is the decorum that 
is observed among gentlemen every- 
where. In the midst is the Executive 
''Chair" of the patriotic orators; if 
there be any reality corresponding 
to that pleasing symbol, it is the leather 
throne from which the President pre- 



54 ^be Spirit ot 



sides over his Cabinet. This is daily a 
receptacle for the overcoats of private 
gentlemen, and now and then its arm 
provides a seat for a story-telling 
Congressman. To-day the most mas- 
terly President of history is in the 
White House — but the Presidential 
manner is absent. There is a Presi- 
dent who shakes his forefinger and 
brings his hand down on the table, 
but one who never patronises or 
draws back into the robes of his ofBce, 
one who is candid always and with 
everybody to the point of indiscretion, 
who plainly has warm feelings, personal 
feelings, too, and breaks out with them 
occasionally — though he exercises far, 
far more patience than he has ever been 
given credit for. 

These two points I may not return 
to (they are not picturesque), but I 



Ube XPHbite ibouse ss 

want to emphasise them now: Mr. 
Roosevelt's Patience and his Order- 
liness. Nothing surprised patience, 
me more. He is called on Order, Good- 
daily to suffer fools, if not 
gladly, at least with resignation, and 
he has learned to do it. In dealing 
with men not fools, also, the Presi- 
dent has, I think, learned a large 
measure of forbearance. I fancy that 
the scrutiny of his public acts in the 
light of his private reasons would show 
that he is not the impetuous man we 
have conceived him. If I do not mis- 
take, he has cultivated control of his 
temper. I have very good reason 
indeed to recollect a scene of four years 
ago when the thunder was loose in the 
White House and — ^but this is a study 
of the President as he is to-day. 

The popular idea of him scarcely 



56 XTbe Spirit ot 

credits the President with the posses- 
sion of a sense of order. It is, in point 
of fact, one of his most marked char- 
acteristics. His mind is orderly; its 
contents are thoroughly arranged; his 
workshop is scrupulously neat. The 
division and subdivision of his day is 
the perfection of system. He goes 
through every day on a time-table 
which a railroad engineer could follow 
no more sharply. His sense of the 
importance of time is the basis of his 
fondness for railroad men. 

The President's good -humour and 
candour have not been sufficiently ap- 
preciated. It is good to have a Presi- 
dent with a laugh like Mr. Roosevelt's. 
That laugh is working a good deal 
too; hardly does half an hour, seldom 
do five minutes go by without a joyful 
cachinnation from the Presidential 



OTe Mbite fbonsc 57 



throat. When Secretary Taft comes 
in, there isn't room in the White 
House for any sound other than the 
chortling laughter of two big men. 
The Secretary's laugh is a '' Ha ! ha ! ha I 
ha!" with a definite and ascertainable 
number of paroxysms. The President's 
is a succession of chuckles— a sort of 
mitrailleuse discharge of laughs. The 
fun engulfs his whole face; his eyes 
close, and speech expires in a silent 
gasp of joy. It is clear that both men 
get a lot of fun out of life. 

For you get no conception of the 
scene unless you understand that the 
business of State is constant- ^^ ^^^^ 
ly relieved with anecdote stairs, 

T^ • No Closets. 

and good-humour, it is car- 
ried on in that spirit, without any 
reservations, with no uneasiness of 
conscience, with intentions as light as 



58 Zbc Wibitc Ibouse 

day and as care-free. There isn't 
any secrecy about the place. There 
is n't a back stairway, nor a side door, 
nor yet a closet in the place. A clothes- 
pole serves for the ministerial wardrobe. 
This is the marvel. 

*'I couldn't do it otherwise,*' the 
President said to me when I ex- 
pressed my astonishment at the 
candour and publicity that prevailed. 
**I couldn't and I wouldn't. I 
don't know any other way. I rest 
everything on the righteousness of 
my cause. Other Presidents have 
been less candid? Then they were 
abler men than I am. I can't, 
simply can't keep any secrets. I 
can work only in the open daylight 
and before the sight of men." 



A TYPICAL DAY WITH THE 
PRESIDENT 

Taft Gets the First Conference, while Beveridge 
Waits — A Congressman Reprimanded — The 
Ends of the World, the Extremes of Social 
Station, Contrasting Ages, and Causes In- 
numerable and Diverse Dealt with by an 
Agile Mind. 

Let us follow the President through 
a typical day in the Executive Cham- 
ber. To avoid any doubt as to its 
being really a definite day, I will say 
that it is Thursday, March 26th. 

The President enters his office at 
9:25. Five minutes later Secretary 
Loeb, who has been on hand for half 
an hour, comes into the President's 
room with a bundle of mail. The Presi- 
dent runs over it and rapidly dictates 
59 



6o H tropical Da^ 

replies; most of his correspondence, 
however, he gets rid of in the after- 
noon. At 9:50 the Secretary of War 
stalks in and is greeted with a shout. 
Business of the correspondence sort 
languishes. The doors connecting the 
Cabinet room are closed, but Senators 
are gathering. Mr. Beveridge comes 
in, his rapid stride overtaking Mr. Mc- 
Cumber of North Dakota. The Senator 
from Indiana is worried: what with a 
diplomatic embarrassment, a crisis with 
Venezuela, and the Civic Federation 
bill sent to the wrong committee, Mr. 
Beveridge is anxious for the Adminis- 
tration. However, he has come to put 
out his hand and steady the ark. 
''Isn't it a shame, Mack," cries Bev- 
eridge, half seriously, "that we should 
have to waste our time here, we Sena- 
tors of the United States, waiting for 



Mltb tbe ipresibent 6i 

a President!" Presently the Indiana 
statesman is joined by Congressmen 
Overstreet and Charles Landis, one of 
three brothers who sustain in Federal 
offices in this generation the reputa- 
tion of a remarkable family. Indiana 
is always a lively subject. Yesterday 
Senator Hemingway was here. They 
are getting their final instructions 
before going West into the fight. While 
they wait, Beveridge — deep on his 
front engraven deliberation sits, and 
public care — urges Landis to give him- 
self to the raising of red pigs; the 
Durrack Jersey porker multiplies faster, 
lives on less, and is better meat than 
any other breed. All Indiana is devot- 
ing itself to the red pig. Before Sec- 
retary Taft leaves there has been some 
serious conversation, but the Indiana 
statesmen warm up the atmosphere. 



62 H XTi^plcal 2)a^ 

Before they go they stand up in a row 
and take a solemn oath never to divulge 
a Presidential joke which has been 
passed around in writing. The Presi- 
dent on his part indorses on the back of 
the memorandum of his wit the words : 
''To be recalled under no circum- 
stances.'' 

If this record gives any idea that 
the jocularity in the President's ofBce 
^^ «r.,^ is excessive or unseemly, it 

The Wilfley •' \ 

Case Comes is time to corrcct that im- 

Up. 

pression. 
When a Representative from Michi- 
gan appeared on an errand, of the issue 
of which he was probably unsuspicious, 
there was no fun going. The gentleman 
is a member of the sub-committee of 
the House Judiciary Committee, which 
the day before had reported on the case 
of Judge Wilfiey of the United States 



Mttb tbe iPrestOent 63 



Court for China at Shanghai. The 
conditions at Shanghai are notorious. 
Taking advantage of the extra-terri- 
toriaHty provisions, every species of 
vice and corruption has flourished 
under the pretence of American legali- 
sation. Judge Wilfley was sent to 
Shanghai to clean it up. He is not pre- 
cisely a kid-gloved man. A sweet and 
gentle soul would hardly be adapted 
to meet the case. The Judge has, of 
course, made bitter enemies, and they 
have pursued him to Washington, de- 
manding his impeachment. A clique in 
Congress, headed by Representative 
Waldo of New York, is fighting him. 
The sub-committee's report was am- 
biguous, but pointed to a censure of 
Wilfley. The caller had signed that 
report. 

Inasmuch as this incident was the 



64 H XTi^ptcal H)a^ 

subject of a debate in the House of 
Representatives on Friday, March 2 7th, 
I have no hesitation in recounting it 
here. The charge was made in Con- 
gress by Mr. John Sharp WilHams, 
Democratic leader, that the President 
had violated Section Six of the First 
Article of the Constitution of the 
United States, which provides that no 
Representative of the people shall be 
called on to account in any other place 
for his utterance in Congress. The 
minority leader added that the fore- 
fathers had inserted that clause "be- 
cause it had been the habit of George 
III. of England to call to the King's 
palace Members of Parliament and be- 
rate them because of their votes in 
Parliament, or when Members of Parlia- 
ment called upon other business to take 
advantage of the visit to berate them 



Mltb tbe iPresi^ent 65 

and to class them as King's friends or 
no King's friends." Mr. Williams 
promised that, if the evidence showed 
that the member of whom I write had 
been called to account by the Presi- 
dent, he would propose that the House 
examine whether or not there had been 
on the part of the President a breach 
of the privileges of Congress. 

This is what happened: The Rep- 
resentative had come to the White 
House that morning to in- ^ ^^^,,,,^. 
troduce the Governor of his tative 

State. The President ex- 
changed a few words with the Governor, 
pleasantly enough, and then turned sud- 
denly to the Congressman, and without 
parley addressed him, as nearly as I can 
remember, thus: 

**I want to know, Sir, how you 
could put your name to a report 



66 H Ui^plcal Da^ 

which does rank injustice to a ca- 
pable and honest official, striving 
his best to do his duty amidst most 
untoward conditions! I want to 
know what you were thinking of 
to condemn a Judge without giving 
him a hearing! This is a clear case 
of vile conspiracy against an up- 
right and a fearless man who is 
serving his country in a place of 
danger and hard work. Your re- 
port has sent joy to the hearts of 
the corruptionists of the city where 
he sat and judged in uprightness. 
It has put a deeper stain, even than 
that which rested there before this 
man began to scrub it out, upon the 
American flag in the Far East. It 
has made it harder for this Ad- 
ministration to uphold abroad the 
good name of the Nation. It is a 



Mltb tbe president 67 



most outrageous act. Nothing more 
unfortunate could possibly have hap- 
pened. You have done a wrong to 
American interests that it will take 
years to right — if it can ever be 
righted. The conditions against 
which this man fought are notori- 
ous. He went there for the pur- 
pose of confronting them, and his 
brave stand has been supported — 
by whom? By those from whom 
he had a right to suspect support? 
By the Congress? No. You have 
made it possible for them to say 
over there: 'Oh, yes, while Roose- 
velt is in ofhce, or while Root is in 
office, American Judges who do 
justice abroad will be protected. 
But when they go out, everything 
will go back to where it was before. 
The Administration is not supported 



68 H Uppical Dap 

by the body of American people. 

The Representative attempted to 
defend himself by urging that the 
reference to his committee allowed no 
other report. The sub-committee was 
asked to determine simply whether on 
the evidence submitted a prima facie 
case had been made out. The report 
distinctly stated that it was based on 
this reference and stated furthermore 
that Judge Wilfiey had not been heard 
in his own defence. 

The President was not mollified in the 
least. He understood all that. That, 
Mr. Waldo indeed, was precisely the 
Beneath point. It was the commit- 

Discussion. . ^. i 

tee s duty to declme to make 
a report on such grounds. It was the 
committee's duty to say that the condi- 
tions of the reference were impossible 
and might lead to the condemnation of 



Mttb the president 69 



an innocent man, and that it therefore 
declined to report, on the ground that 
it did not have the facts in its purview. 
*'To send forth to the world a 
report like this is a most cowardly 
and outrageous thing. I will say 
nothing of the attitude of Mr. Waldo. 
His attitude is beyond, beneath, dis- 
cussion. I cannot trust myself to 
speak of it. But I must say I cannot 
see. Sir, how you could put your 
name to a piece of rank injustice 
like this. You are a man. Suppose 
this were a case in which the good 
name of a woman were involved. 
Would you sign a report on a 
hypothetical question? Would you 
stamp the name of that woman 
forever with an official declaration 
that, if the facts were as they were 
alleged to be, though it had to be ad- 



70 H Upptcal Da^ 

mitted she had had no opportunity 
to offer evidence tending to prove 
her honour, she was an evil woman ? 
You know you wouldn't. The tem- 
per of the American people would 
not stand for such a thing. The good 
name of a woman is a jewel to be 
guarded with extremest care. Shall 
we be more jealous of anything than 
of the good name of America in the 
other hemisphere? I tell you the 
thing is outrageous. ' ' 
The President's manner was stem in 
the extreme ; his language was scathing, 
yet he did not lose his temper. His 
attitude and bearing was that of 
one administering a rebuke as to the 
justice and necessity of which there 
could be no doubt — as, indeed, there 
can be no doubt. Mr. Roosevelt's 
speech is plain, precise Anglo-Saxon. 



Mttb tbe iptestbent n 

He is never profane. He never em- 
ploys a locution unsuitable to the 
drawing-room. And yet when he likes 
he can concentrate more imprecatory 
emphasis in a polite characterisation 
than most men can in a frenzied curse. 

Upon the challenge of Mr. Wilhams 
in the House of Representatives on the 
following day, the Representative gave 
a sugar-coated account of the episode. 
His story was that ''the President had 
intimated that he felt that the commit- 
tee might have expressed itself in a 
happier manner ! " 

A land owner from Australia is 
introduced. 

"Let me see," says the The Country 
President. ''You are from and the City. 
Northeast Australia? Would that 
be the region of the" — the President 
names an Australian river. ' ' Farther 



72 H ^pptcal S)a^ 

north ? Still your country is tolerably 
well watered . I need not tell you that 
I am tremendously interested in Aus- 
tralia — and in New Zealand too. 
You have one of the most interest- 
ing of the newer countries. It is 
tremendously important that you 
should avoid one pitfall, however. 
It is most necessary that something 
should be done to populate your 
vast stretches of country. It would 
be most unfortunate if your cities 
were to continue to grow out of all 
proportion to the growth of your 
farm lands and pasture lands. That 
always indicates an unhealthy con- 
dition, upon which permanent pro- 
sperity may not hope to rest. You 
do well to be proud of Melbourne, 
' Sydney, Adelaide, Dalgety, Bris- 
bane, and Perth — but what are you 



Mitb tbe ipresi^ent 73 



doing to persuade people to go to 
your lands? We are very proud of 
Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and 
Olympia." (The Australian had 
been introduced by a Washington 
Senator; in the meantime three 
other gentlemen had entered the 
Cabinet room.) ''But it won't be 
any advantage to Washington to 
allow them to grow faster than the 
country grows. Why, when Ken- 
tucky, from which State these gentle- 
men come, had the population which 
the State of Washington has to-day, 
it did n't contain within its borders 
a single town of 4000 population." 
The Kentuckians had learned some- 
thing of the history of their State, 
but they nodded and looked at each 
other, gravely assenting to the cor- 
rectness of the President's informa- 



74 H XT^plcal 2)a^ 

tion. He was rushing on into a 
discussion of dry farming and of the 
various types of water-traps adapted 
to a region such as North Australia. 
*' However," he finished, 'Sf you 
have, as you say, sixteen inches of 
rainfall, you are pretty well fixed 
by nature." 

Then a South American Consul Gen- 
eral appears, with the Republican 
From leader of Virginia and an- 

So^'utr"^*'' other patriotic Virginian. 
America. The Consul General wants 
a diplomatic appointment, or at the 
least wants to go to Japan with his 
present rank. The other Virginian 
has his eye on an Assistant Commis- 
sionership for the Tokio Exposition. 
The plea is artful; Virginia has only 
four Federal office-holders; but the Re- 
publican party there is united and pro- 



Mitb tbe lPre0t^ent 75 

gressive, and is even talking about 
carrying the State. There is some frank 
discussion, in the course of which the 
President tells of the only diplomatic 
appointment that is open, and it is 
really promised to Indiana, if that State 
has the man for it. The Virginia leader 
is a very young man, who has been 
gradually recognised in place of his 
father. The President tells his friends 
that new conditions call for new 
methods, and that young men are bet- 
ter adapted to the leadership of the 
South to-day than men of another 
generation. 

The President's way when he refuses 
an application varies from **I doubt, 
Sir, whether your friend is quite the 
best man for the place, from the infor- 
mation which reaches me" to **They 
tell me he is a crook." 



76 a Uypical 2)a^ 

Everybody has gone but one quiet 

man who has been standing near the 

window in the Cabinet room. 

Troops for 

Alaska It is Govemor Hoggatt of 

Alaska. To him now the 
President goes. '' Well, Govemor, how 
is Alaska ? Who is killing whom now ? ' ' 
The President's tone is jocular, but his 
face grows hard as flint as he peruses a 
500-word telegram which the Govern- 
or hands him. '' This is bad. What 
savages! I suppose you want the 
troops?" There has been a desperate 
strike on at the famous Treadwell Mine 
in Southeastern Alaska. Some of the 
1400 strikers, the telegram relates, 
have stolen dynamite, and it is believed 
that they will use it. The President 
remembers that Fort William Henry 
Seward is only a few hours' distance 
from Treadwell by steamer. 



mitb tbe ipresi&ent 77 

The President leans against the Cabi- 
net table, and then sits on it, ruminat- 
ing, rubbing his forehead, looking out 
the window at the opening japonicas. 
* * I hate to see our troops used in this 
way. I suppose there is no way out." 
Governor Hoggatt assures him that he 
knows of none. The Governor says: 
**You couldn't get together in all 
Alaska ten men to fight this crowd. 
Surely the Government is bound to pro- 
tect life and property threatened in this 
way." Then he goes into a history of 
the Alaska labour troubles, the impor- 
tation of the Slav miners, the danger to 
all business enterprise in the Territory 
if order is not maintained. He is a man 
with a quiet, assured, even voice, com- 
pletely master of every fact, every 
name, and every date. The necessity of 
military action would seem to be clear 



78 H ITppical Wa^ 

enough, but the President is extremely 
reluctant. Every particle of self-assert- 
iveness has vanished from his bearing, 
his words, and his manner of speech. 
*'It is bad business — bad busi- 
ness. I do want to be sure that 
every resource of the civil power 
has been exhausted before an appeal 
is made to the military arm." He 
sighs, gets up, and walks across the 
room twice. "I don't see why these 
enterprises should ever have been 
begun up there in a region of law- 
lessness. Well, Governor, go over 
to the War Department and tell 
them from me that in case they 
believe it absolutely necessary they 
may send troops from Fort Seward. 
If they believe there is no other way, 
mind. You believe it absolutely 
necessary. Governor?" 



Mttb tbe president 79 

The President remains silent for a 
moment longer, sitting on the Cabinet 
table, staring out of the window. The 
Governor of Alaska has gone to carry 
the President's order to send the regu- 
lars to the Tread well Mine. Spring has 
renewed its attack on Washington this 
morning, and the White House trees 
and boscages are bursting out in tender 
greens. Before the door there is a soli- 
tary policeman engaged in upholding 
the dignity of the approach to the 
President — and in playing with a squir- 
rel which has climbed to his shoulders. 

Visitors are pressing in again. The 
President engages in a long and serious 
discussion with Mr. Milton Railroad 
Purdy, the trust-breaking ^^^^^^_ 
expert of the Department of road Men. 
Justice. Mr. Purdy is likely to be 
the next United States District Judge 



8o a Upptcal 2)ai? 

of Minnesota, Judge William Lochren 
having announced his intention to re- 
sign. Senator Nelson favours Mr. 
Hale, a Minneapolis lawyer, but he is 
sixty-four years old, and the President 
has a fondness for young men. 

The President sees Representative 
Hepburn over the bill he has introduced 
to amend the Sherman anti-trust law. 
The President is disappointed at the 
reference of this bill to the Judiciary 
Committee of the House. He sees 
Senator Burroughs of Michigan, talks 
with Senator McCumber, with Congress- 
men Weeks, Tirrell, and Gillett, and 
Bennett and Edwards of Kentucky, 
and the Second Assistant Postmaster 
General. 

While the President is conferring 
with the expert trust prosecutor, Mr. 
J. J. Hill comes in and takes a seat. 



mitb tbe president si 

The President waves his hand at the 
railroad magnate. *'See you in just a 
minute, Mr. Hill." But it is nearer 
fifteen minutes. *'Here is a man," he 
says as he clasps Mr. Hill's hand, 
"who I was very much surprised yes- 
terday to learn was such a radical that 
I saw myself shrunken into a timid 
weakling of a conservative of the mild- 
est type." The two sit with legs 
curled up under them on the sofa and 
shake their fingers at each other's 
noses. Mr. Hill is not an optimist just 
now. 

A party of railroad engineers who are 
in Washington conferring with South- 
em railroads about reduction of wages 
is seen next. The President wins them 
at once, but he won't commit himself. 
" I will do what I can. One thing you 
can depend on: I won't say I will do a 



82 H Uppical 2)ai? 

thing until I 'm sure that I can come 
pretty near doing it.'* 

Then there is an interlude of friends 
paying respects. ''I am glad to see 
you." ''This certainly is a pleas- 
ure." *' It was MIGHTY good of you to 
come and see me. I am really deeply 
obliged to you." " Now, do you know 
that NOTHING could be greater pleas- 
ure than this?" "By George, I am 
glad to see you!" "That's fine. 
That 's bully." *'I 'm mighty glad 
to have a chance to see you." ** By 
George, this is great!" 

One of those whom he greets is 
Senator Stephenson of Wisconsin, who 
A Venerable is scvcnty-nine years old and 

Senator and . • i . r ^ ^ ^ 

a Youthful IS president of twenty-five 
Governor. business Companies, and who 
works, so he says, from seven o'clock 
in the morning until nine o'clock at 



Mttb tbe prestbent 83 



night. All the same he doesn't in- 
terest the President as much as does 
George L. Sheldon, Governor of Ne- 
braska. The Governor enjoyed him- 
self so much yesterday that he is back 
again. Governor Sheldon is a young 
chap, with a still younger look, six feet 
tall and a trifle over-nourished, with a 
fine head of hair and a slight stoop. 
You can see that he was the favourite 
orator of his class at college. Beveridge 
looked just that way ten years ago. 
The Governor gazes about with a satis- 
fied sense. He is in the presence of the 
paraphernalia of Presidential power — 
stranger things have happened than 
that he should one day be there as 
master. And indeed there is that 
chance. If Governor Hughes gets the 
nomination in June, nothing would be 
more natural than that Nebraska's 



84 H Ui^pical Ba^ 

Governor should be his running mate. 
But Governor Hughes is n't going to 
get the nomination, and Sheldon is for 
Taft. It would be a thing unusual to 
have both candidates from the West, 
but Governor Sheldon believes it pos- 
sible to lick Bryan in his own State. 

The President plainly likes the tall 
young Governor. Apparently he con- 
siders that, as Doctor Johnson said of 
a Scotchman, much may be made of a 
Nebraskan orator if caught young. The 
scene reminds one of another, which the 
late Jeremiah Curtin used to describe. 
He visited the White House with Gov- 
ernor Greenhalge of Massachusetts in 
1 89 1 — Mr. Harrison was President then 
— and found a Civil Service Commis- 
sioner pacing the anteroom. *'That 
man/* said Greenhalge to Curtin, 
*' looks for all the world as if he had 



Mitb the president 85 

been inspecting the White House, and, 
having found it suitable, has resolved to 
come here to live himself." "Yes," 
replied the translator of Sienkiewicz, 
** nothing human is more certain than 
that Theodore Roosevelt will be Presi- 
dent." Whatever George L. Sheldon 
may be, he will never be a Roosevelt, 
however. He will never talk like this: 
*'That was a great ride I had 
yesterday — simply great, I wish 
you had been with me. Took two 
fences, and a water jump, and an 
embankment — well, I don't know 
what the grade was, but it was practi- 
cally perpendicular. You can go down 
and look at it if you want to. My 
horse did his prettiest yesterday. 
General Bell was along. No, no acci- 
dents yesterday. I have had my 
share, though. Let 's see : I 've broken 



86 H XT^ptcal S)ai? 



my arm, and my rib, and my nose, 
and my wrist — you see it 's a little 
out of kelter yet — and I 've been 
knocked senseless at polo, and been 
thrown — well, I don't like to say 
how many times. No man can 
strike a prairie dog town without 
getting into trouble. I recollect 
one fall I had in that country. I 
was wound up in my horse and a 
steer in a manner I sha'n't forget to 
my dying day, and was thrown — I 
thought at the time it was about 
fifty feet. Governor, I did enjoy 
that speech of yours; all but the 
first part. That was a clear case 
of misdirected enthusiasm, but 
the part about Taft was all right." 
The President's devotion to out-of- 
door exercise is, of course, well known. 
Two afternoons in the week, as a rule, 



Mitb tbe ptesibent 87 

he rides; two afternoons, as a rule, he 
spends on the tennis court. Clad, this 
season of the year, in a black sweater, 
which comes off when the Presidential 
temperature rises, with a hat pulled 
over his eyes when he plays in the east 
court against the sun, when in the west 
court bare-headed, with Alford W. 
Cooley or Gifford Pinchot as a partner, 
he confronts perhaps most frequently 
the nimble Ambassador of France, 
James R. Garfield, Robert Bacon, or 
Herbert Knox Smith. A guest is al- 
ways particularly welcome at the White 
House who can put up a good game of 
tennis. The President's vim and his 
agility of foot and wrist testify to his 
excellent form to-day — the result of 
his careful habits. 

Two days a week, as a rule, Mr. Roose- 
velt goes on a tramp, most frequently 



88 H XT^ptcal Dai^ 

along the Potomac. It is whispered 
that he leads some of his companions a 
pretty chase — for few people at Wash- 
ington keep themselves in training as 
does the President. The other day he 
was accompanied by Mr. Richard Kear- 
ton, an English ornithologist and photo- 
grapher of wild birds, and the excursion 
was in Rock Creek park, through the 
valley and up and down the cliffs. 
There the two nature-lovers watched 
the flashing, through the young green 
of spring-touched boughs, of king- 
fisher, cardinal, and redwing, robin, 
bluebird, and Carolina wren, but lis- 
tened in vain for the note of the mock- 
ing-bird, which the Englishman had 
never heard. 

Mr. Roosevelt is the first President 
who has had time for exercise and 
play — and one reason he has time for 



TPditb tbe ipreslbent 89 

a hundred features of work indoors 
which no other President ever did is 
because he takes time for recreation 
out of doors. 



A CABINET DAY AT THE WHITE 
HOUSE 

What One Man can Do in an Hour — Listening to 
Appeals for Pardon and for Appointments, 
Army and Navy Affairs, Delegations, and 
Resignations, Righting Private Wrongs, and 
Deciding Public Questions in a Fraction of a 
Morning. 

Friday was Cabinet day, but the 
President managed to attend to a few 
small matters: He considered and he 
declined to grant a pardon in the case 
of an offender from Texas; he called 
the Surgeon General of the Army to 
take under special consideration the 
case of a young officer turned down 
because he was declared to have, 
though he denied it, symptoms of tu- 
berculosis; he made the final arrange- 
90 




UJ S 
05 o 



I o 

LLl Ph 



-Q 

o -^ 
o ^ 

cc ex 






Cabinet Dai? at tbe Mbtte Ibouse 91 

ments for sending troops to the seat of 
trouble in Alaska; he gave an unen- 
couraging hearing to a proposition from 
Oregon (I fancy Mr. Harriman's small 
Italian was in it) ; he considered candi- 
dates for the position of United States 
Attorney for the Idaho District — the 
seat of the trouble culminating in 
the murder of the Governor of Idaho; 
he accepted the resignation of the 
Controller of the Currency, bade the 
retiring incumbent good-bye, and an- 
nounced his successor ; he received dele- 
gations from Tennessee on the matter 
of the appointment of a Federal Judge 
for the Eastern District; he dodged a 
well-planned coup intended to draw 
him again on the third-term question; 
he gave some necessary orders for the 
fleet, now on the greatest maritime ex- 
pedition in history; he at last reached 



92 B Cabinet 2)as 

a conclusion as to the delicate and im- 
portant subject of the attitude of the 
Government toward the Government of 
Venezuela; he determined the Govern- 
ment attitude on the Ambassadorial 
perplexity surrounding the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Hill to the Court of the 
German Kaiser, — and then he convened 
the Cabinet. 

Senator Frazier of Tennessee early 
brought in a delegation of railroad 
A Tennessee "^^n. The President was 
Delegation, pleased. " You are a con- 
ductor, I think," he said to one a 
trifle the superior in address. **Now., 
which is the engineer and which the 
fireman? Ah, yes. I am an honorary 
fireman myself," he said, and then he 
mentioned the names of two or three 
locomotive engineers, John Still of 
Atlanta being one, and a fireman or 



Ht tbe Mbite Ibouse 93 

two, and asked his visitors if they 
knew them. 

*'We are here, Mr. President," said 
the spokesman, ''in behalf of Foster V. 
Brown of Chattanooga. I speak in be- 
half of the unanimous sentiment of the 
railroad men of Tennessee in declaring 
our belief that he is the man for the 
place." And so on. It was that Fed- 
eral Judgeship. The President heard 
them through. Then he said: 

''Gentlemen, I thank you for 
coming to see me. This is most 
important. What you tell me is 
to be considered very seriously, 
very seriously indeed. Of course I 
take it you understand that no plea 
on behalf of your friend, or of any 
one else, would have any weight 
with me, if it were merely on the 
ground that the appointment 



94 H Cabinet Wa^ 

would please any particular class. 
It is pleasing to me to know that 
Mr. Brown is liked by the railroad 
men of Tennessee, if that is an in- 
dication that he is esteemed also 
by every other class and sort and 
rank of men there, men of every 
other trade and profession. You 
don't come here to ask me to ap- 
point Mr. Brown because you 
think he would be favourable to 
you." The foreman of the dele- 
gation had made a speech not 
quite of the most discreet sort. 

''You wouldn't dream for a mo- 
ment of hoping that I would do a thing 
^. . like that; you would n't 

Discussing a ' -^ 

Federal Want me to do a thing like 
g®s ip. ^^^^^ ^ judge who would 

favour his friends in a good cause 
would be just as corrupt a judge and 



Ht tbe Mbtte -fcouse 95 

would work the same harm to our 
institutions as a judge who would 
favour those who had corrupted him 
in an evil cause. The thing to be con- 
sidered about the man in whose inter- 
est you come here is not whether he 
is wanted by the railroad workingmen 
or by the capitalists or by the 
learned, but whether he is an hon- 
est, God-fearing, upright man, with 
the learning and poise for a judge. 

*'I believe I have said somewhere 
that it would be desirable if our 
judges cotild be drawn more directly 
from the ranks of men in the activ- 
ity and struggle of life. This is an 
hour when the academic must give 
way to the wise and the practical. 
There is always perhaps a danger 
that our judges should grow away 
from the people, getting out of 



96 H Cabinet Ba^ 



knowledge of and sympathy with 
the man who works with his hands. 
That would be most unfortunate. 
But it would not be anything like 
so unfortunate as it would be to 
make a man a judge simply be- 
cause the men who work with their 
hands would like to see him judge. 
No, the question is, Is he decent, 
honourable, square, and able? I have 
heard nothing against your candi- 
date, except that his health is not 
all that it might be. How about 
that?" 

The Senator from Tennessee assured 
the President that Mr. Brown's health 
was satisfactory. As the delegation de- 
parted Mr. Frazier lingered a moment. 
"Boys,** cried the President, '* he is 
trying to hand me another man! *' 
An influential citizen from Vermont 



Ht tbe TRIlbtte Douse 97 

with an attractively gowned wife was 
introduced by his Congress- ^ ^^.^p p^jig 
man. The Vermonter had ^^ Work. 
a shot ready; his little speech closed 
thus: *'Mr. President, is it just and 
right that one man should dictate 
who shall or who shall not be Presi- 
dent?" His face shaped to symbo- 
lise righteous indignation at the bare 
thought, the Vermonter paused for the 
President's reply. Singularly enough, 
the impetuous Mr. Roosevelt would 
not to the breach; the orator's climax 
remained uncapped. Maybe the Presi- 
dent had met the trick before. At all 
events, the rhetorician had to conclude 
himself. *'No, Sir; it is not. Then no 
one man can be permitted, not even 
yourself, Mr. President, to say that 
Theodore Roosevelt shall not be the 
next President of the United States." 



98 H Cabinet Da^ 

The President's expression of thanks 
for the call was made to the wife. 

A committee from New York City 
begging the President to make an 
address on Memorial Day at Grant's 
Tomb, one of the great occasions of the 
patriotic year, was disposed of in 
twenty words. "Can't, gentlemen. 
Simply can't. I'll write to you mighty 
polite, but I can't. Go ask Taft." A 
Congressman with this delegation (I 
believe it was Calder of New York) 
had a word to say for a candidate for 
Assistant Appraiser of merchandise at 
New York, but the President had an- 
other man in mind. 

The Controller of the Currency, Wil- 
liam B. Ridgely, handed the President 
his resignation, and bade him farewell.- 
His father-in-law, Senator Cullom, and 
Senator Hopkins came with Mr. Ridgely 



Ht tbe XKabite Douse 99 

to ask the President to appoint a 
Mr. Smith of Illinois to the succession. 
The President was understood to 
intimate that the Secretary of the 
Treasury had expressed himself very 
forcibly about this appointment, and 
he regarded it as vitally necessary that 
the occupant of the position be a man 
in perfect sympathy with the Secretary. 
Under these circumstances the Illinois 
Senators declared they would not think 
of pressing the candidacy of Mr. Smith. 
Lawrence O. Murray will be the next 
Controller. 

At 10:58 the Secretary of Commerce 
and Labor comes in — Mr. Straus. Sec- 
retary Garfield is in the room j^^ cabinet 
as the chime finishes the Assembles, 
fourth quarter. A distinguished-look- 
ing individual who has come in by the 
talisman of Baron Kaneko's name, and 



loo Cabinet Da^ at tbe Mbite Ibouse 



who begins by telling the President that 
he is not a Jap, although he has received 
two orders from the Emperor, wants to 
be an Assistant Commissioner for the 
Tokio Fair, but gets no encourage- 
ment. Francis B. Loomis, ex-Assistant 
Secretary of State, is to be Commis- 
sioner. Taft stalks in and takes his 
stand behind the chair at the right of 
the President's. Secretaries Root, Cor- 
telyou,Metcalf , and Wilson, and Messrs. 
Meyer and Bonaparte, having come in 
something like that order, are all in 
place. Venezuela, the Berlin Embassy 
question, the Alaska situation, the re- 
vision of the anti-trust law, are on the 
tapis. It is just five minutes after the 
hour when the President takes his seat 
at the head of the council table. 



GIVING AUDIENCES TO TWO 
HUNDRED 

A Throng of Congressmen and Officials, with a 
Bewildering Variety of Concerns — Mr. Roose- 
velt Wants to Hunt Lions in Africa, but Mean- 
while Urges Taft upon All Influential Callers, 
and Refuses to Talk with Third-Term Bourne. 

Saturday is a rainy day — a ** grow- 
ing day," the farmers would call it; 
oppressive, ''muggy," in the Yankee 
vernacular. The weather is on every- 
body's nerves. Yesterday there was a 
prostration from the heat, and a 
Congressman shot a negro to death 
and wounded a white man. To-day it 
is worse. Nobody is feeling himself. 
However, the President saw over two 
hundred people between 9:30 and 2:30, 
among the number being Senator 



I02 Oiving HuMences 

Lodge, Senator Beveridge, Senator 
Borah, Senator Warner, Senator Over- 
man, Senator Bourne, Mr. Justice Har- 
lan, ex-Governor Allen of Porto Rico, 
the Government counsel of the Inter- 
State Commerce Commission, Secretary 
Taft, Assistant Secretary of State 
Bacon, seventeen Congressmen, the 
United States Marshal of Mississippi, 
two newspaper correspondents, **Dry 
Dollar*' SulHvan of New York, a 
Rough Rider, and dozens of others 
who have left no record of distinct per- 
sonality upon my mind. 

A brace of young lads were among 
those waiting in the Cabinet room 
before the doors were opened. They 
sat on a window ledge half an hour, 
their eyes dancing like a parcel of mice, 
till the great man of their dreams came 
in. He worked around to them in short 



TLo Uvoo 1bun^re^ 103 

order; they had plenty to say, and 
didn't want to go any more than he 
wanted them to go. 

A Congressman from Northern New 
York had brought in several friends. 
The President detained them several 
minutes. *'From up the State? By 
George, I am glad to see you! That 's 
really my true home up there. It was 
you people who gave me my chance. 
In a sense I owe everything to you.'* 

The President does not say 
*'De-light-ed." 

Then there was a man who had lately 
come from Africa, where he had done 
some lion shooting. *'By planning a 
George, you are the man Lion Hunt, 
whom I have got to see! You have 
been shooting lions in Africa. Come, 
now; tell me all about it. I am not 
going to let you go until I have heard 



I04 Giving Hubiences 



the whole story. I am going down 
there the minute I get through with 
this!'* — and the President dragged 
him off to the sofa, where the two sat 
half an hour discussing lion hunting. 
To everybody the President talks 
Taft. To ex-Governor Allen he says : 
**Taft is an ideal man. He's 
square. He wouldn't lend himself 
to anything not absolutely ap- 
proved by his conscience for the 
sake of the Presidency. That 's 
what I like about Taft." 
The President grins when the ex-Gov- 
ernor tells him that he found the 
Porto Ricans easy people to deal with. 
*'0f course," laughs the President, 
*' there is less trouble in the island than 
there is in one vigorous American 
town." 

It is a pleasing sight to see the ven- 



Uo XTwo Ibun^reb 105 

erable Justice Harlan and the young 
President. It is said the senior Jus- 
tice is ready to resign. He has con- 
ceived such a regard for Mr. Roosevelt 
that it may be he wants him to appoint 
his successor. Whether or not this is 
the case, the interchange of ideas 
between the Judge, great-framed but 
stooped and hoary in the service of his 
country's constitutional interpretation, 
and the forceful personality who is 
accused of tearing the Constitution to 
tatters, is eager and, it would seem, 
affectionate. 

'*0h! I am eager to have a good 
talk with the reformer and the — the — 
ornithologist," cries the President, as 
Judge Kohlsaat and Prof. Clark are 
ushered in. But it is Mr. Glasgow, 
counsel for the Inter-State Commerce 
Commision, whom he has sit down 



io6 GiPlrtG HuMences 

with him, and the two are deep in 
legal papers before the scientist and 
the idealist have found seats. 

The President addresses Timothy 
Sullivan gravely as ** Senator" before 
AniUustri- the group in the Cabinet 
ous New room, but when the eminent 

Yorker m 

Audience. Tammany statesman is de- 
parting the President thinks of a prac- 
tical joke (there may have been a lit- 
tle more to it than that), and calls 
out: *'Tim! Oh, Tim; wait a minute! 
I want you to see a man who needs 
watching, a most vtnscrupulous person " 
— and sends for Assistant Attorney 
General Cooley, who comes in from 
the big mansard pile across the street, 
breathless, and sits down on the sofa 
with "Big Tim," while the President 
chuckles for five minutes at the scene. 
Mr. Cooley, a rather elegant person, 



Zo Uwo 1bunt)reD 107 

and an idealist in politics, gets along 
very well with "Dry Dollar" Sullivan 
nevertheless. I don't know what they 
talked about. 

Senator Owen of Oklahoma is an 
Indian, and he is a new man in the 
Senate, but he is the most forcible man 
with the most vigorous manner in 
tete-k-tete who has sat down with the 
President during the week. 

Some pretty big things are going on, 
and the heads of two Washington 
newspaper bureaus have been admitted. 
The Secretary of War comes in and 
stands waiting until the President has 
given them two minutes apiece. The 
President won't allow the correspond- 
ents to quote him, but tells them frank- 
ly his position on the new anti-trust 
bill now before the Congress. He is in 
favour of it in principle, but he isn't 



io8 (Bit>ina HuMences 

sure about every provision it contains. 
He won't say he has not seen it, but he 
can't pretend to have had time to 
examine it. His position was made 
plain in his message. If the bill con- 
forms to that, he is for it. One thing 
ought to be made clear: he won't 
stand for any legalisation of the boy- 
cott. Please make that clear. They had 
asked him not to use the word ''boy- 
cott" at any rate. Therefore he is 
going to use the word ''boycott." He 
won't stand for it under that or any 
other old name. There wasn't to be 
any misunderstanding about that, any 
possibility of a charge of double deal- 
ing. He couldn't interfere in Con- 
gress to the extent of protesting 
against the reference of the bill to 
any particular committee. He pro- 
bably could say that it was time it 



Uo XTwo Ibun^reD 109 

came out of committee and was acted 
on. 
Secretary Taft is greeted High Office 

affectionately as "Big Bill." and Familiar 

A little friend of mine was ^^^ ' 

very much scandalised the other day 
when I read aloud some autobiograph- 
ical details of her childhood told 
by Queen Victoria in her LetterSy just 
published. When the future Queen of 
England went to Windsor to see 
George IV., that monarch exclaimed, 
**Give us your pawT* A little later, 
as the King passed by with the Duch- 
ess of Gloucester in a phaeton, the 
little Princess caught his eye, and 
he cried, "Pop her in!" My young 
friend thought this most improper 
language for royalty. But the Queen's 
memoirs declare, in the very sen- 
tence following her quotation of the 



no 6i\?ina HuMences 

Georgian salute, that the King was a 
man of extreme dignity and charm of 
manner. Don't imagine because the 
President calls people " Bill " or '* Tim," 
and employs sometimes very homely 
English, that any one undertakes famili- 
arity toward him. 

Senator Bourne of Oregon has been 
in again to-day, and finds it difficult 
to get the President's eye. While he 
is waiting. Representative Madden wins 
the President's sympathy for a bill 
appropriating $100,000 for the preser- 
vation of the cabin in which Lincoln was 
bom. Half a dozen other callers are 
disposed of. Senator Bourne at last 
gets a few words. " Mr. Bonaparte will 
see you. Senator. Yes, I have talked, 
with him. See him for yourself. When ? 
Very soon, I should think. In the next 
day or two. He was very reluctant 



XTo ZVQO Ibun^teD m 

about it. I doubt if he is willing. But 
he will talk with you." And the Sen- 
ator from Oregon is pulled along by 
means of a handshake, and the next 
in line takes his place. 

To one group of legislators the Presi- 
dent speaks very forcibly on the neces- 
sity of repressing anarchism ^ wam- 
in this country. Defending ing for 
his order for the suppression 
of the anarchist journal, La Question 
Sociale, Mr. Roosevelt says with im- 
mense energy : ' ' When — people — come 
— to — the — United — States — they Ve — 
got — to — BEHAVE — United — States ! " 



AN ESTIMATE OF MR. ROOSE- 
VELT 

The Marvel of His Physical Energy, Nimbleness of 
Attention, Power of Concentration, and Volume 
of Information — His Clairvoyant Understand- 
ing of the Average Man — His Lack of Philo- 
sophical or Poetic Sympathy. 

Here may be given, of course, but 
glimpses of the kaleidoscopic scenes 
enacting daily in the White House. 
These may serve, however, to give an 
idea of the manner in which the busi- 
ness of the Government is transacted 
and of the personality of the man who 
directs its transaction. So great is 
the natural public interest in this man, 
so unfounded have been some per- 
sonal criticisms of him widely dissem- 
inated by the less scrupulous of his 



Un Bstimate ot /iDr* 1Roose\>elt 113 

opponents, and in some particulars so 
incomplete has been the popular con- 
ception of his character, that it may be 
worth while to recapitulate here the 
impression which I formed of it while 
observing him as the centre of these 
scenes and many more. Any one who 
has read thus far may be depended 
upon to pardon the personal statement 
that the author has never been a par- 
tisan of Mr. Roosevelt. Besides a dis- 
position to look with some contempt 
upon the Life Strenuous, the particular 
incarnation of the spirit of eager ac- 
tion exhibited in the person of Theodore 
Roosevelt had never commended itself 
to him as particularly admirable. He 
did not go to scoff, however; neither 
did he exactly remain to pray. He 
came away with an experience, how- 
ever, v^rhich it m.ay be to edification 



114 Hn Estimate ot 

thus to relate. A week's close and con- 
stant observation of a man known but 
casually and publicly might reasonably 
be expected to modify a judgment. In 
the present case it VvTOUght something 
very like a change of heart. The tes- 
timony is that of one whose name, of 
course, is of not the slightest conse- 
quence, and yet what any man, and es- 
pecially one prejudiced against rather 
than in favour of Mr. Roosevelt, ob- 
served during rather an unusual oppor- 
tunity, must be of some weight as a 
contribution toward a final estimate of 
the President. 

He is, first of all, a physical marvel. 
He radiates energy as the sun radiates 
Mr. Roose- light and heat, and he does 
^f ^^ it apparently without losing 

Radium. a particle of his own energy. 
It is not merely remarkable, it is a sim- 



Obv. IRoosevelt 115 

pie miracle, that this man can keep up 
day after day — it is a sufficient miracle 
that he can exhibit for one day — the 
power which emanates from him like 
energy from a dynamo. Once we all 
believed in a beautiful law known as 
that of the conservation of energy. No 
force, so went the dream, was lost, It 
only was transformed; it underwent 
metamorphosis; the sum of energy in 
the universe was always the same. It 
was the discovery of raditim and the 
radioactive susbtances which wrought 
the discomfiture of that law. It is Mr. 
Roosevelt who discredits it entirely. 
He never knows that virtue has gone 
out of him. He radiates from morning 
until night, and he is nevertheless 
always radiant. 

One despairs of giving a conception 
of the constancy and force of the stream 



ii6 Un Estimate of 

of corpuscular personality given off by 
the President. It strikes the visitor 
directly the door of the Cabinet room 
closes behind him. It begins to play on 
his mind, his body, to accelerate his 
blood-current, and to set his nerves 
tingling and his skin aglow, as the Bec- 
querel ra3^s affect a sensitive screen. 
It is a healthy, pleasant influence, 
warming and awakening. It scatters 
chill and embarrassment; it restores 
equilibrium broken by the excitement 
of the prospective interview with a 
personage. I have once or twice re- 
marked that young lads brought into 
the President's presence, after a clasp 
of his hand and a look stolen at his 
face, lift their heads and begin to talk 
fearlessly, to be dragged off reluctantly, 
waving their hands at their big friend. 
Repeatedly it was noticeable that the 



/IDt* 'Koosevelt 117 

embarfassed spokesman of a delega- 
tion, stopping confused in his prepared 
speech, grinned back at the President's 
sympathetic laugh and began to tell 
his story simply and well. It is hard 
to make a set speech to the President — 
easy to talk to him straight away and 
from the heart; he draws it out of you; 
he bombards you with ever-flowing 
electrons of his energy and his per- 
sonality. 

Most callers at the White House are 
there for the pupose of bringing some- 
thing away. The daily pro- ^^^ ^^ 
cession might be regarded as Spoils the 

• 1 ^1 Egyptians. 

a constant raid upon the 
Presidential treasury of favours. Few 
of the raiders, it must be confessed, get 
away with much. Now, it takes energy 
to resist raiders. Mr. Roosevelt not 
only resists them and saves most of 



ii8 Hn Estimate ot 

his possession from becoming their 
prey, but he manages to dispossess 
them of what Httle they have already 
and makes them ashamed of themselves 
for not having brought in more. The 
President's room is a place which has 
seen much spoiling of the Egyptians. 
The President likes to give, and he 
does give, but no man with a greater 
genius for acquisition, the acquisition 
of information, ever lived. He has an 
infinite passion for facts; an insatiable 
thirst for information; he lays violent 
hands on any detail the existence of 
which he gets wind of. Every visitor 
pays him tribute. The President gives 
the visitor — possibly he gives him what 
he came for; if it be possible he does — 
but at all events he gives him a wel- 
come, the sense that he has done well 
to come, and then he pumps him dry 




MAJOR LOEFFLER 

The Doorkeeper 

From a photograph by Harris & Ewing 



ffbv. 1Roosex>eIt 119 



and sends him forth fulfilled of the 
President's own ideas, own opinions, 
and enthusiasm. 

To watch this process going on hour 
after hour, day after day, gives one a 
sense of energy which he Mr. Roose- 
had never suspected one hu- "^®*^ ^^^ ^^^y 

Temperate, 

man body could contain. but 

Never does the President Abstemious, 
appear to meet a personality than 
which he is not the stronger; an idea 
to which he is a stranger; a situation 
which disconcerts him. He is always 
master. He takes what he pleases, 
gives what he likes, and does his will 
upon all alike. Mr. Roosevelt never 
tires; the flow of his power does not 
fluctuate. There is never weariness 
on his brow nor, apparently, languor 
in his heart. To ennui he is a stranger 
■ — would be were he the humblest man 



120 Hn ^estimate of 

in the land, tied down to its most com- 
monplace labour. He is gifted with 
an eagerness of mind and a virility of 
body that wotild find excitation in any 
situation. I have watched the scien- 
tists at the Wood's Hole biological 
laboratory conduct investigations of 
fatigue; they measured by delicate 
machines the physical results of the 
wagging of a finger until it could wag 
no more; they observed the chemical 
changes that accompanied the beating 
of a turtle's heart. Mr. Roosevelt's 
most violent exertions would have 
given them no tangible restdts. It is 
to be presumed that catabolism ensues, 
but no evidence of it ever appears. 
The President ends the day as fresh 
as he began it. The wonder increases 
in view of the fact that he eats little. 
The pleasures of the table appeal to 



/lDr» IRoosevelt 121 

him not at all; he is notably abstemious 
in food and drink. Virility, vigor, vim, 
abound in him as in no man he meets, 
and their utmost exercise only increases 
the store. The President is a living 
illustration of the possibility of the 
miracle of the widow's cruse. He 
is a man of really phenomenal physical 
power, a fountain of perennial energy, 
a dynamic marvel. 

It is my belief that a large part of 
the explanation of Mr. Roosevelt lies in 
this matter of his physical constitution. 
To what degree this is a gift of nature 
and to what degree an acquirement I 
do not know. His remarkable control 
of his energy, however, is certainly his 
acquisition. For the second striking 
fact about Mr. Roosevelt is this: That 
his dynamic outflow, inexhaustible as 
it appears to be, is yet directed with the 



122 an ]£stimate ot 

strictest economy. I mean to say that 
not a particle of his energy is wasted. 
At every moment it is brought to bear 
in full current upon the particular 
object of the moment. This is what I 
mean: 

The President is able to concentrate 
his entire attention on the subject 
^ , in hand, whether it be for 

Power of 

Concentra- an hour or for thirty seconds, 
and then instantly to transfer 
it, still entirely concentrated, to another 
subject. Let me say that there is no 
subtlety in my observations, in my 
analysis. These are not the conclu- 
sions of a mental expert; they are 
not ingenious revelations of obscure 
phenomena or processes — they are sim- 
ple statements of facts apparent to 
anybody who has the opportunity of 
seeing the President for a few hours — 



/!Dr» tRooscvclt 123 

statements of facts not only apparent, 
but commanding. If the President's 
energy is phenomenal — and the whole 
world knows that it is — so is the 
mobility of his energy ; so is the nimble- 
ness of his mind. Swiftly and easily 
he passes from one thing to another 
totally disconnected with it. He flies 
from an affair of state to a hunting 
reminiscence ; from that to an abstract 
ethical question; then to a literary or 
a historical subject; he settles a point 
in an army reorganisation plan; the 
next second he is talking earnestly to 
a visitor on the Lake Superior white- 
fish, the taste of its flesh and the articu- 
lation of its skeleton as compared 
with the shad; in another second or 
two he is urging the necessity of arm- 
ing for the preservation of peace, and 
quoting Erasmus ; then he takes up the 



124 Un i£stimate ot 



case of a suspected violation of the 
Sherman law, and is at the heart of it 
in a minute ; then he listens to the tale 
of a Southern politician and gives him 
rapid instruction ; turns to the intrica- 
cies of the Venezuela imbroglio, with 
the mass of details of a long story 
which everybody else has forgotten at 
his finger tips; stops a moment to tell 
a naval aid the depth and capacity of 
the harbour of Auckland; is instantly 
intent on the matter of his great and 
good friend of the Caribbean ; takes up 
a few candidacies for appointments, 
one by one; recalls with great gusto 
the story of an adventure on horse- 
back; greets a delegation; discusses 
with a Cabinet secretary a recommen- 
dation he is thinking of sending to 
Congress. All this within half an hour. 
Each subject gets full attention when 



/lDr» IRoosevelt 125 

it is up; there is never any hurrying 
away from it, but there is no loitering 
over it. 

The White House atmosphere is 
charged with energy, but there is no 
sense of haste. I think no „ ^....^ - 

Mobility of 

visitor ever leaves with a Attention, 
feeling that he has not had ample 
time. There is plenty of time for 
everything, but every moment of time 
is used. Plenty of leisure even to stop 
and to tell a story, or hear one, but 
not a moment without something doing. 
I cannot imagine the President replying 
as Dionysius the Elder replied when 
asked when he would be at leisure, 
*'God forbid that it should ever befall 
me." He might well, however, make 
the remark which Plutarch credits, I 
think it is to Epaminondas, ** How came 
he to have so much leisure as to die, 



126 Un Estimate ot 

when there was so much stirring ? ' ' Mr. 
Loeb or an assistant secretary slips in 
now and then with a matter which 
can be disposed of by a word or by a 
stroke of the pen. The amount of 
routine business disposed of thus casu- 
ally by the President during the day 
is enormous. But there is nothing 
casual in the President's treatment of 
the subjects to which he really addresses 
himself. It may be only one minute 
or two, but it is not an animadversion 
— it is entirely concentrated consider- 
ation. The President's power of atten- 
tion is flexible, plastic, fluid. 

Furthermore, it is not a 

Sincerity of 

HisSympa- transfer of attention only 
^^^' which the President achieves. 

It is a transference of interest and of 
sympathy. He enters into the new 
subject with his whole being. His 




b 2 

I- a 



/IDr» 1Roosex)elt 127 

manner changes; his pose alters; his 
language takes new colour. One cotdd 
almost guess the subject under debate 
by the President's attitude, look, and 
tone of voice. With a boy he is a boy ; 
with a Senator, a statesman; with a 
politician, a poHtician; with a diplo- 
matist, a niler; with a bunch of cattle- 
men, a ranchero; with a family, a 
father. I might illustrate this, endlessly, 
but this article already grows too long. 
The best summing up of this peculiarly 
vivid sympathy of Mr. Roosevelt's has 
been made by one who has seen him in 
many situations: *'When he is at a 
funeral, he acts like the corpse; and 
when he is at a wedding, everybody 
takes him for the bride." 

That is it precisely; the President 
enters into every situation with all 
his sympathy, all his heart; and his 



128 Hn JEstlmate of 

sympathy is catholic in the extreme. 
He has himself experienced many sides 
of life, and he has mingled freely with 
men and women who have drawn him 
in imagination into many more. His 
human sympathy is as wide as was 
that of Terence. It is altogether im- 
possible, for one who observes the man- 
ner in which day after day he meets 
men of the most diverse fortunes, 
occupations, and tastes, to put down the 
President's attention to them to any- 
thing but sincere interest. One is not 
on his oath when he greets a caller, 
any more than when he is composing 
an epitaph. Fools, babblers, and bores 
come to the White House. They are 
swiftly dealt with. But as a rule the 
President is genuinely glad to see his 
visitors. He would be a most unhappy 
man in seclusion. When he is alone 



/iDr* iRoosevelt 129 

he falls back upon the companionship 
of an author — though I daresay he feels 
the disadvantage of not being able to 
talk back to him. The President is the 
omnivorous reader, pulling a book from 
his pocket when he has a moment 
unoccupied, and culling its ideas with 
the swiftness of a trained reviewer. 
Mr. John Burroughs, than whom no 
man has a juster knowledge of the 
President's character, dwells with 
amazement on this faculty. 

His knowledge of standard literature 
is considerable; of contemporary writ- 
ing, phenomenal. He has ^imitati n 
made his own the litera- of His Tem- 
ture of several fields of his- P®^*°^®^ • 
tory, and is more or less an authority 
on more subjects than American zo- 
ology and Irish mythology. But what 
I particularly noticed was his wide 



130 Hn ^Estimate ot 

familiarity with the latest books and 
magazine literature — my own particu- 
lar concern. In his reading the Presi- 
dent exhibits that breadth of interest 
and sympathy which is observable in 
his dealings with his visitors. Life and 
the world in every one of innumerable 
phases, the multitudinous deeds of 
men, their thoughts and ways attract 
him with indescribable fascination; 
the physical facts concerning the hab- 
itat of man teem for him with vital 
importance. I should not imagine that 
his mind often enters the worlds of 
poetry or romance. He is allured 
rather by what is tangible. After a 
fashion, he respects sentiment — but the 
sentiments he indulges are those com- 
mon to most men. He is not consti- 
tuted to originate or to respond easily 
to unusual or subtle sentiments. The 



nbv. 1Roo5e\>elt 131 

niceties of speculation or analysis woiild 
be likely to annoy him. Of robust 
moral fibre, ethical refinements make 
little appeal to him. It does not occur 
to him that man has no right to kill 
beasts for pleasure. He is not a con- 
templative man; he abstracts the im- 
mediate practical significance from a 
fact, but he does not pursue it and 
investigate its relationships for the 
purpose of any philosophy. He lives 
in his front rooms. Origins and ulti- 
mate conclusions interest him little. 
The world questions do not knock at 
his doors. Dreams do not nest in his 
heart. He requires only a basis upon 
which to act. He is a President, not a 
philosopher. The native hue of reso- 
lution is not in Mr. Roosevelt sicklied 
o'er with the pale cast of thought; nor 
do enterprises of great pith and mo- 



132 Hn lEsttmate ot 

ment, their currents turned awry, lose 
the name of action. With a humane 
breadth of knowledge and sympathy 
that would fit out a dozen poets or 
philosophers, he allows no urbane re- 
finements to paralyse his power of 
performance. He is Spartan, not 
Attic. 

To dwell for a moment on the 

President's capacity of sympathy: It is 

quite true that he is a man 

Volume of ^ 

inf orma- of Strong Opinions , that he be- 
*^°^ lieves in himself and is of iron 

will. That he is sincere in his interest in 
other men of whatever station in life 
or of none I am sure no one could ob- 
serve him for a week and doubt. He 
does not merely send his humblest 
visitor away with the feeling that he 
has met a friend and exchanged ideas 
with him, but in a surprising number of 



/lDr» iRooscvclt 133 

cases he remembers that hiimble visi- 
tor, recalling a day or two later some 
remark that passed between them. 
What he learned from the visitor I 
believe the President never forgets. 
I hate to play Dr. Watson's part to 
the President's performances; I hate to 
be forever using the words ''marvel- 
ous,' ' * * phenomenal, ' ' * * extraordinary. ' ' 
Yet it is a literal fact that in several 
physical respects at least Mr. Roosevelt 
is a marvel — in, for instance, his 
abounding energy and his mobility of 
interest. It is once more necessary to 
resort to a strong adjective to charac- 
terise the amotint of his information. 
He is master of a prodigious nimiber of 
facts. If one is astonished at the 
end of half an hour with him, he is 
amazed at the end of a week. This 
man is ignorant of nothing — by which 



134 Hn lEstimate ot 

I mean that there is nothing about 
which he does not know something; in 
most cases it is a good deal. Whether 
it be the character or antecedents of a 
candidate for an appointment, or the 
history of a piece of legislation, or the 
present status of a bill, or the date of 
a social movement or phenomenon in 
the West or the South or New England 
or in mediaeval Europe or in modem 
New Zealand, the name and date and 
work of an obscure author, or the plan 
of one of Napoleon's battles, Mr. Roose- 
velt has information on it. Sometimes 
he is wrong — my observation was, not 
often. To dozens of visitors with whom 
I have heard him converse he recalls 
particulars of former meetings with 
them — some little incident, the names 
of three or four others who were there, 
the bully time they had had, the par- 



/»r. IRoosevelt 135 

ticvilar stories he had told and heard, 
the time his train left. In such details 
he was never mistaken. Greeting a 
man for the first time, he would tell 
him about his father or uncle, or give 
him some particulars regarding his 
own town. "What was your mother's 
name? Then you must be descended 
from Jonathan Edwards." Surprised 
assent is given. " I should like to have 
Jonathan Edwards for an ancestor. A 
long way back, though. He was a 
great man, but he had no sense of 
humour." There is really constant 
work for a Dr. Watson to stand by 
exclaiming: *' Marvellous! Marvellous!" 
If the exigencies of political fortune 
should ever reduce Mr. Roosevelt to the 
necessity of seeking the means of sub- 
sistence in the ranks of the vulgar, he 
would do well as a practical clairvoyant. 



136 Hn 3£sttmate ot 

Clairvoyant in a deeper sense is the 
President's knowledge of the contents 
Understand- of the popular mind and 
ing of the ^^^^^ I ^^^ Qjj describe 

Popular -" 

Heart. it SO. No man in the his- 

tory of our country, save Mr. Lin- 
coln, has lived so close to the people, 
responded so instantly and so ade- 
quately to the popular sentiment, 
known so certainly what the people 
would stand for. I reluct from any 
attempt to interpret the President or 
account for him on any other grounds 
than those which showed themselves 
during the period the experiences of 
which this book describes. Nor is it 
necessary to do so. It is sufficient to 
watch Mr. Roosevelt in consultation 
with the official and unofficial represen- 
tatives of the people who come to see 
him, to understand that he is indeed the 



ifB>r» IRoosevelt 137 

type and ideal of the average American. 
He is not representative of the East. 
He knows that the centre of population 
has been for a quarter of a century in 
Indiana, and that it is likely to remain 
there for a century. A current maga- 
zine article describes the President as 
an ordinary man energised to the nth 
power. It accounts for him as an ex- 
hibition of complete normality. It 
makes other remarks about him which 
my observations refuse to confirm. But 
this they do confirm, and this, I feel 
free to say, the President's own esti- 
mate of himself confirms: 

He has a peculiarly accurate, a quite 
phenomenally accurate, understanding 
of the average man. Mr. Roosevelt has 
said to me that he is no genius, that 
he does not recognise in himself the 
faintest scintillation of genius. In this 



138 Hn Estimate of 

he is over-modest. It is genius to un- 
derstand the average man. To repre- 
sent absolutely the average man, to 
contain within one's own soul all that is 
common to humanity, its common 
knowledge, instincts, hopes, fears, as- 
pirations, and to contain nothing more 
at all, would be to be great beyond all 
other greatness. After all, common 
himianity is very wonderful and very 
noble. To be truly an average man 
would be to be a part of the mind of 
millions, to be possessor of the greatest 
thoughts that live in the world, to have 
a vision wider and farther-reaching 
than that of an isolated seer or poet 
whatsoever. It is the inalienable right 
of every free-bom citizen to be an aver- 
age man — and most of our fellow- 
countrymen have embraced that right 
and hold it sacredly. That is to say. 



fibv. IRoosevelt 139 

in their good qualities they do not rise 
above the average, however short of 
the average they may be in others. Mr. 
Roosevelt is up to the average in every 
particular — he has the genius not to 
advance out of the understanding of the 
average man in any particular. He 
eschews, by instinct, the refinements of 
the idealistic reformer, the speculative 
philosopher. He never- allows the world 
of average men to catch him thinking 
in a suspicious manner. He knows to a 
nicety, he feels by means of a delicate 
sixth sense which the majority of us 
do not possess, precisely what the 
average man is thinking about or is 
ready to think about, wants or is ready 
to demand. 

I have spoken of the curious contra- 
diction between the President's democ- 
racy of manner and habit and his 



I40 'Bn lEstlmate ot 



autocracy of performance. He is an 
autocrat, I take it, not in his own right, 
A TT«- „ t>ut in the right of the democ- 

A Wholly ^ 

Human racy. He is clear in his con- 
viction that he knows what 
the people want, that he in his person 
represents the popiilar demand. It is 
clear enough, certainly, that he does 
not represent the ideas of the particu- 
lar class in which he was bom, nor 
of the education which was given him. 
It is in the confidence that he has be- 
hind him the will of the people, that 
he asserts himself as no President 
before ever dared to assert himself. 

This, however, is but one of the 
curious contradictions that go to make 
up the personality of Theodore Roose- 
velt. He is a mass of contradictions: 
An advocate of peace, he is a lover of 
war. He hastens to enHst for the 



/»r. IRoosevelt 141 

Spanish war, he forces us to embark 
upon a great naval and military pro- 
gramme, and he makes a pet of the 
Army — but he of all the world stops 
the war in the East and he refuses to let 
the almost intolerable insults of a 
Castro nag him into a fight. He is a 
civil-service reformer — and a practical 
politician. And so on. The fact is, 
human nature is essentially paradoxi- 
cal. Those are indeed singular and 
bewildering contradictions, which, on 
every hand, in every normal man, and 
in the Nation^s ideal, are reconciled in 
the mysterious alembic of life. 

Mr. Roosevelt is all the nearer the 
heart of the people just because he 
is not an academic theorist, not a 
bodiless abstraction, but a passionate, 
somewhat wilful, but wholly human, 
bundle of contradictions. 



THE PRESIDENT ON MR. 
ROOSEVELT 

What the Executive might Say of Himself — "I 
Am No Genius" — Washington, Lincoln, the 
Average Man, and Leadership — How Seeming 
Impetuosity may Really Be Reasoned, and 
Seeming Rashness Really Patience — The Fun 
of Being President. 

I CAN imagine the President frankly 
discussing an estimate of himself such 
as the one recently published to which 
reference has been made. The Presi- 
dent would be likely to say: 

' ' An average man energised to the 
wth power? That 's not far wrong. I 
am an average man. I am no genius. 
Nobody knows that better than I 
know it. I found that out long ago 
myself. I have n't a hint of genius in 

any direction. But it would be alto- 
142 



TLbc president 



143 



gether wrong, it wotdd be quite ab- 
surd, to say that I follow public 
sentiment and don't lead it. I do 
lead it; in any event, sometimes I 
lead it. I led it in the Panama 
action. We should never have had 
Panama without me. Nobody else 
would have got Panama. Nobody 
else would have dared to make the 
move I made. Nobody in the wide 
world. I did that, and public senti- 
ment responded instantly and said 
that I was right. I am leading in the 
creation of interest in the regular 
Army and Navy. It is one of my 
pets to have the regular establish- 
ment well thought of, to bring 
it before the public attention and 
make the country proud of it. No- 
body else would have dared do that. 
Nobody but me would have sent 



144 '^^^ ipresibent 

the fleet around the globe. I led in 
settling the anthracite strike. Who 
was it proposed all these things? 
Who worked the country up to 
them ? The great movement to which 
the country is now aroused for the 
preservation of our National re- 
sources, am I following or leading in 
that?" 

"I beHeve I have an unusual 
degree of sympathy with the average 
„,., , American, and understand 

Wide and 

Sincere him and what he wants 

Sympathy, better than my critics do. I 
meet here daily all sorts and condi- 
tions. I am not afraid of any of them. 
I know every man's subject pretty 
nearly as well as he does himself. I 
sympathise with the views of life, to 
some extent, of every one of them. I 
have a catholic sympathy. I don't 



©n jfflir. lRoose\>elt 145 

know how I got it ; I suppose I must 
have been bom with it, although that 
sort of thing grows with the exercise. 
Try to understand men and enter 
into their lives, and you will soon be 
able to do it. These women who 
come here — it may seem to you a 
small thing, but they go away com- 
forted. The mothers go away with 
a sense that the chief authority of 
their country understands some- 
thing of their lives and of their 
troubles, just as the men who come — 
most of them have a home and 
a wife and children — go away feeling 
that I am a man just like themselves ; 
that my family is a main thing with 
me too, and that I think about my 
children, and plan for them and 
worry over them too. I don't have 
to act. It flows out of me. I am 



146 XTbe president 

interested. I can't tear myself away 
from one to go to another. They tell 
me how they feel and what they are 
interested in, and I tell them what 
I am doing and thinking about. 
I talk to them square, as man to man, 
every one of them. I haven't any 
reservations; could n't have. I don't 
bullyrag them, either. I put my 
opinion just as strongly as I know 
how, but they like me for that. They 
would n't stand for being bullyragged 
any more than I would. They would 
detect the play-acting or insincerity 
mighty quick. Every man of them is 
full of interest to me. There was 
'Dry Dollar' Sullivan a while ago. 
Tim has his good sides, and I can 
meet him on those good sides. He is 
a big man physically ; stripped for a 
fight, he would show for a better man 



®n /IDr. lRooBev>elt 147 



than I am, probably, but if we ever 
met he knows that it would be a 
mischief of a tussle, and that I would 
fight until I was blind. He has seen 
me by the ring-side, and he knows 
that I appreciate some of the things 
he is interested in. I believe he 
does n't drink or even smoke, but in a 
way he likes his share of the cakes 
and ale of life. Most men do. So do 
I. Then there was the little Metho- 
dist preacher. In the essential things 
that he is interested in and stands 
for, in everything that is sincere and 
upright and making for righteous- 
ness, I am with him, and I guess he 
saw that." 

''I know the common instincts of 
men. But I do lead. I don't follow 
all the time, for a fact. Lincoln had 
an almost miraculous understanding 



148 XTbe iptestbent 

of the people. Not that I am to be 

mentioned in the same breath with 

Lincoln. Lincoln was an 

Lincoln the 

Only Ameri- average man, but Lincoln 

can Genius. • -u • j 

was a genius besides — 
perhaps the only genius in our 
political history. They say that 
Lincoln followed, that he even did n't 
lead the country in the emancipation 
of the slaves, in the unyielding de- 
mand for the preservation of the 
Union. That is absurd. He fur- 
nished the arguments, put profound 
truths simply, prepared the senti- 
ment, and then he led. 

** Washington? Why, Washington 
did n't have a spark of genius. He 
was just the average man of his day, 
the very best type of his day with 
indomitable will, unbounded cour- 
age, and no end of faith, and no end 



Qn nbv. 1Roo0e\)elt 149 

of patience. No, I don't think he 
was a military genius at all. He 
fought away, and did n't know when 
he was whipped. Oh! He was a 
wonder, he was a hero for you! But 
it is n't genius that does big things. 
Washington was courage, determina- 
tion, and patience raised to the nth 
power. That 's why he is generally 
held to be the greatest of Americans. 
Frederick the Great wasn't a mili- 
tary genius. Not at all. Frederick 
ran away in his first battle. And his 
second and third battles were most 
commonplace exhibitions of soldier- 
ship. Then he began to win. Now 
an ordinary general would n't get four 
chances. He would n't have got a 
second chance after such a fiasco as 
Frederick's first fight was. He was a 
king, and cotild do as he pleased, 



150 Zbc lprestC)ent 

and he kept plugging away at it till 
he learned the game/' 

"Have I got Washington's pa- 
tience? Certainly I '11 excuse you — 
The Latest put it at me. I hope I 
President's have; I think I have. Not 

View of the 

First. Washington's perhaps, but 

still a good deal of patience. Let 
me see. I believe Washington had 
a temper, too. Can you imagine 
any one on this job who did n't 
have patience or who had n't ac- 
quired it? Could any one see me 
here an hour without realising that 
I sometimes have to hold myself in? 
I know as well as any one that pa- 
tience is power. I do possess it far 
more than I am given credit for. 
Here comes a bunch of reformers 
wanting me to break with the ma- 
chine somewhere. People have al- 



©n ffbv. iRoosevelt 151 

ways been at me to break with the 
machine somewhere. I have always 
fought it. I have never yet given 
into it on a matter of principle. 
But I have kept my temper. I have 
simply said, ' I am sorry you can't see 
it my way.' Why, from away back 
when I was Police Commissioner in 
New York I had to be patient and 
hold my tongue. They would have 
broken me in a day. Oh, no, indeed, I 
have n't always had my way. Not by 
a good deal. I understand compro- 
mise — when no principle is involved 
— and I understand waiting, too. 

** People say I am impetuous, and 
hasty, and rash. Maybe I am. But 
they are usually mistaken in the 
specifications. I was called rash 
when I ordered the fleet around the 
world. Why, I had been planning 



152 XTbe iprest^ent 

that thing for over a year, and for 
six months the plans had been per- 
fected, waiting the moment to put 
them into execution. They said I 
was impetuous when I sent my long 
message to Congress. Never in the 
world was there anything more care- 
fully premeditated and timed. You 
see, there was danger of a reaction 
setting in. Strong efforts were being 
made to use the Wall Street troubles 
to discourage the movement for re- 
form. I prepared that message de- 
liberately, and timed its release to the 
hour. There was nothing impetuous 
about it. I was n't goaded to it, and 
I did n't lose my head for a moment. 
I know the sentiment of this country ; 
I know what the people want and 
what they ought to want, and I 
know the moment to say the word. 



Qn IS^v. IRoosevelt 153 

"Oh, I get a lot of fun out of it! 

I can't begin to tell you. I would be 

ashamed to let anybody know how 

much I enjoy the Presidency. I like 

to be at the centre of big things, and 

I like to give things. To refuse, 

though, is hard; I don't like that. 

Still, I am very happy. Plenty of 

work and a clear conscience ought 

to make any man happy." 

Mind you, I don't affirm that the 

President said this. Only it is just 

what he might have said if it had 

occurred to him to discuss himself and 

his work. 

For it is characteristic of the Presi- 
dent that he has a very just concep- 
tion of the character of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 



Addresses and Presidential 
Messages 

Of 

Theodore Roosevelt 

1902-1904 

With an Introduction by 

Henry Cabot Lodge 

standard' Library Editiotit with photograoure froHtif 

piecm, uniform with the Works. Octavo, S»»00, 

Popular Edition. Croutn Suo,, St»2S 

It is most important that people should be able to read and, 
let us hope, ponder well what has been written or said by any 
man to whom they are asked to intrust the Presidency of the 
United States. For that reason this volume has far more 
significance than that of being merely an edition to the col- 
lected works of President Roosevelt. Here in these pages is 
the real man. We may think his views of public politics are 
wise or unwise, but no one can read these speeches and not 
realize that the man who made them is not only intensely 
patriotic, but that he is also trying to make the world better, 
is seeking the triumph of good over evil, and so far as he can 
do it is striving to have righteousness prevail on the earth. 

The volume is published with the full approval of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, and the selection of the addresses has been 
under his supervision. The publishers desire to make clear, 
however, that in Mr. Roosevelt's opinion these speeches have 
been dedicated to the public and he derives, therefore, no 
business advantage from their publication. 

Send for descriptive circular. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New YorK London 



THE WORKS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Standard Library Edition 

9 volumes, 8°, illustrated . . . each, $2.50 

Cloth . . .per set, 22.00 

Half Calf extra, " net 45.00 

Dakota Edition 

16 volumes, crown 8°, Illustrated, Cloth, gilt tops, 

full gilt backs, each, 1.50 

Full Limp Leather, " 2.50 

Half Morocco extra, each, net 3.50 
Sold in sets only 

Sagamore Edition 

15 volumes, 16°, Cloth with frontispiece, per vol. 

sold separately .50 

The set, 15 vols., Cloth, 7.50 

The set, 15 vols., Half Calf 22.50 

Also in Paper, per vol. .25 

THE WINNING OF THE WEST 
Four volumes, with Maps .... each, $2.50 
From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 
From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1776-1783 
The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Common- 
wealths, 1 784- 1 790. 
Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1809 

" For the first time the whole field has been covered in one 
work by one accomplished and thoroughly equipped writter, 
whose book will rank among American historical writings of 
the first order." — Critic. 

THE WILDERNESS HUNTER 

With an Account of the Big Game of the United States, and 
its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle. With illus- 
trations by Remington, Frost, Sandham, Eaton, Beard, 

' and others. 8°. 

Standard Library Edition $2.50 

" For one who intends to go a-hunting in the West this 
book is invaluable. One may rely upon its information. But 
it has better qualities. It is good reading for anybody, and 
people who never hunt and never will are sure to derive plea- 
ure from its account of that part of the United States, rela- 
tively small which is still a wilderness." — N. Y, Times. 

New York — G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS— London 



THE WORKS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



HUNTING TRIPS OF A RANCHMAN. 

Sketches of Sport on the Northern Cattle Plains. With 
27 full-page wood engravings and 8 smaller engravings 
from designs by Frost, Gifford, Beard, and Sandham. 
8". Standard Library Edition . . . . $2.50 

"One of those distinctively American books which ought to be wel- 
comed as contributing to raise the literary prestige of the country all over 
the world." — N', Y. Tribune. 

" One of the rare books which sportsmen will be glad to add to their 
Kbraries. . . . Mr. Roosevelt may rank with Scrope, Lloyd, Harris, 
St. John, and half a dozen others, whose books will always be among the 
sporting classics." — London Saturday Review. 

THE NAVAL WAR OF 1812; or, The History of the 
United States Navy during the Last War with Great 
Britain. 

8th edition. With diagrams. 8"*, pp. xxxviii. -f- 53li $2.50 

*' Shows in so young an author the best promise for a good historians- 
fearlessness of statement, caution, endeavor to be impartial, and a brisk 
and interesting way of telling events." — N. Y. Times. 

*'The reader of Mr. Roosevelt's book unconsciously makes up his mind 
that he is reading history and not romance, and yet no romance could sur« 
pass it in iatex^s.t.''*— Philadelphia Times. 

AMERICAN IDEALS, and Other Essays, Social and 
Political. 
With a Biographical and Critical Memoir by Gen. Francis 
V. Greene. 12°, gilt top $1.50 

Standard Library Edition, 8° . . . .2.50 

*' These essays are energizing, sound, and wholesome. They deserve 
to be widely read." — Chicago Tribune. 

''These are papers of sterling merit, well worth perusing, and deserving 
their rescue from the files of the periodicals in which they first appeared, 
to form a more easily accessible volume. Mr. Roosevelt's reputation as a 
municipal reformer should secure them a wide ^t^.^^— Detroit Free Press. 

ADDRESSES AND PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGES. 

1902-1904. 

With Introduction by Henry Cabot Lodge. 12*, $1.50 
Standard Library Edition. 8° . . . . 2.00 



New York — G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS — London 



Should be read by every American regardless 
of his party, or his candidate 

Addresses and Speeches 

of 

Charles Evans Hughes 

With an Introduction by 

Jacob Gould Schurman 

President of Cornell University 

About 300 Pages. With Portrait. Price, $1.50 

The book begins with an introduction by 
President Schurman, which is at once a brief 
biographical sketch and an estimate of Gov- 
ernor Hughes's career as a public man; and, 
after this, it offers a generous number of 
selected speeches, which are arranged in three 
divisions. Under one head stand addresses 
expressing the speaker's attitude toward pub- 
lic oflSce and official duty ; under a second head 
come the addresses concerned with the ques- 
tion of the regulation of public-service 
corporations; and under a third head, miscel- 
laneous occasional addresses. 

Appearing in the nick of time, this book 
will afford those who wish to vote with their 
eyes open a chance to know fully and precisely 
where Governor Hughes stands with regard 
to public questions. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



WAY 28 ie08 



